Newsweek has released their 2013 list of America’s Best High
Schools. 15 Monroe County high schools are
cited on this list. These schools
represent the diversity of the communities in our county. There is a school from the city and a school
from one of the smallest villages. There
are schools from solidly middle class towns and also from districts with high free
and reduced lunch rates.
It is worthwhile to note that in a state where the quality
and cost of public education are often criticized by state leaders, the same
leaders who regularly endorse the idea of charter schools, the Newsweek data
tells a different story.
Of the list’s 2000 nationally ranked high
schools, 194 are from New York State.
How does this compare with other states?
In this measure of high level academic performance, New York outshines the
other states. California has almost
twice as many people as New York but only 30% more schools on the list (253). Texas, with 30% more people than NY, has fewer
schools (165). And a state often cited
as an education powerhouse, Massachusetts, which has only 34% of the population
of New York has a disproportionately smaller number of schools on the list, just
48 or 24% of New York’s number. Many
states, of course, have only a handful and sadly some have only 1 or less.
Schools on the list are identified
as selective (students must pass selection criteria to be admitted), magnet,
charter, or open enrollment. Of New York’s
194 schools, only 1 is a charter school.
And while there are a number of selective or magnet schools on the list,
the vast majority are open enrollment schools.
And when one looks more closely at New
York’s data, Monroe County’s school district’s accomplishments are notable. New York is the nation’s third largest state
with approximately 2,685,000 K-12 students.
Monroe County’s student population represents only 4% of the number of
students in the state yet 8% of New York’s listed high schools are located
here.
The Newsweek list is just one of numerous
rating systems that organizations use to evaluate and characterize the work of
public schools. There are many ways to define
excellence in education.
All this does not mean that there are
not schools in New York where students are performing woefully below the level they
need to be at to make good lives for themselves. These results in no way
eliminate the need to constantly analyze what schools do so we can learn and
improve our programs. But it does mean
that in a lot of places around New York State educators are doing a great job
and students are benefitting from attending these great schools.
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