Newsweek is out with it's rankings of the best High Schools in the nation. It's a very interesting article and read, but in classic news media fashion, it's much more of a sound bite than it is a real analysis of school performance.

Here is the entire criteria they used:

Newsweek's Best High Schools List uses a ratio, the number of Advanced Placement (AP) and/or International Baccalaureate (IB) tests taken by all students at a school in 2004, divided by the number of graduating seniors.

That's it. No concern or analysis of:

# of students who start high school but never finish.
Teacher to student ratio
Innovation of program and curriculum
Computer to student ratio
Extra Curricular activity and #'s of students involved
#'s of students who go on to and graduate from college
Overcrowding
Drug Use, Suspensions, Expulsions
Budget per student etc...

So, in other words, what it really asked was how many kids are taking hard classes vs. the number of students graduating? A good question for sure, but the WHOLE story? I think not.

Read the article, do the research and look at the school report cards (that in many cases are posted on district and school web sites) and ask yourself this one question. Would I move to let my child attend this school?

The answer might surprise you, just as the Newsweek methodology surprised me.

Tim