Gautier High School has been named one of America’s top high schools in Newsweek’s 2014 High School Rankings!!!! For more than a decade, Newsweek has published an annual list of America’s Top High Schools, ranked primarily according to a ratio of AP/IB exams to the number of students graduating. This year they did things a little differently. With help from the research firm Westat, the magazine presented two separate rankings: an absolute list and a relative list that they called “America’s Top High Schools for Low-Income Students.” The first list identifies top-performing schools based on a metric of student achievement and college preparedness data provided by the National Center for Education Statistics and from the magazine’s survey of schools. It will come as no surprise that this list is dominated by schools in areas with high average income and low racial diversity. So the magazine produced a second list that takes into consideration how well schools serve students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds—measured by the percentage of students qualifying for free school lunches. There is almost no overlap in the top 10 schools on each list. Newsweek said it hoped that providing two lists instead of one sheds light on the underlying factors often ignored or submerged in school rankings. Threshold Analysis: First, the magazine created a high school achievement index based on performance indicators (i.e., proficiency rates on state standardized assessments). For the absolute list, the index was used to identify high schools that perform at or above the 80th percentile within each state. For the relative list, the index was used to identify high schools whose performance exceeds their state’s average by 0.5 standard deviations or more when accounting for students’ socioeconomic status. Ranking Analysis: For the high schools on both lists identified in the threshold analysis, the magazine created a College Readiness Score based on the following six indicators: o Enrollment Rate—25 percent o Graduation Rate—20 percent o Weighted AP/IB composite—17.5 percent o Weighted SAT/ACT composite—17.5 percent o Holding Power (change in student enrollment between ninth and 12th grades; this measure is intended to control for student attrition)—10 percent • Counselor-to-Student Ratio —10 percent Congratulations to Gautier High School! For more school rankings, go to newsweek/topic/high-schools
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 23:17:56 +0000
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