STEELE CREEK NEWS
Olympic Schools
Rank among Top 6% of Nation's High Schools
(July 2,
2010) Four high schools among the Olympic Community of Schools rank
in the top 6% of public high schools nationwide according to a list
released last month by
Newsweek.
Newsweek bases
its rankings on how hard school staffs work to challenge
students with advanced-placement college-level courses and tests.
Just over 1.600 schools—only 6 percent of all the public schools in
the U.S.—made the list.
Newsweek takes
the total number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate,
or Cambridge (AICE) tests given at a school each year and divides
that by the number of seniors graduating in May or June. The 2010
rankings are based on 2009 data.
National
Rankings with ranking among Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools in
parenthesis and scores:
119 (2) - Math,
Engineering, Technology, and Science (METS) - 3.76
453 (9) - Biotechnology, Health, and Public Administration (Biotech)
- 2.385
811 (13) - Renaissance - 1.792
1245 (14) - International Studies and Global Economics (Global) -
1.339
About half of
Charlotte-Mecklenburg high schools made the list. Only two North
Carolina high schools in counties adjacent to Mecklenburg County
made the list, and no high schools in nearby South Carolina counties
made the list. See the entire list here:
America's Best High Schools.
Newsweek editors use
the number of tests taken rather than passing rates because they
found that most American high schools kept those rates artificially
high by allowing only top students to take the courses. In other
instances, they opened the courses to all but encouraged only the
best students to take the tests.
Studies have
shown that the best predictors of college graduation were not good
high-school grades or test scores but whether or not students had an
intense academic experience in high school. Such experiences were
produced by taking higher-level math and English courses and
struggling with the demands of college-level courses like AP or IB.
Other factors,
such as teacher quality and extracurricular activities, are
important but too subjective for a ranked list. Participation in
challenging courses and tests, on the other hand, can be counted and
provides a useful, quantitative measure of high schools,
Newsweek says.
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