Posted on 05/12/2015 5:14:18 PM PDT by grundle
Am I any better than any of those kids...absolutely not, was I more advantaged...yes, but there are probably many kids from there who are Doctors, Lawyers, and whatevers...I'm just me.
As a private school grad, we were snobs’ but not in a bad way. I actually thought that may be it was the tie and sweater I wore that attracted the girls from other schools, but I will have to say yes, we were all control freaks who used our minds to compete and learn.
Thank you Mom and Dad for not making me go to some BS crap public school.
Churches are egalitarian ... that works out well.
“I actually thought that may be it was the tie and sweaterI wore that attracted the girls from other schools,...”
Nah it was your good looks ;)
Are you philosophically opposed to homes schooling as that is the ultimate in physical separation?
The stats say that only 6 out of 100 jr high students in CA will complete a four year college. A large percentage go on to more nefarious activities. I think it is pretty smart to remove a child from that environment at the earliest possible moment or better yet to never enter.
You are correct; you do not look down on someone because they lack a quality education or work in the trades but I also don’t think you throw them in with the wolves.
OH MY GOODNESS!!!!
Did you see the students at the site making their fingers into the shape of a gun! What is wrong with these people?!?!?! (For all the satirically challenged people out there, yes, I am kidding.)
And the VA one is in what is now a blue county (tho it was pretty red when the school was established).
Bottom line is that all these schools are in affluent areas, with educated people who want their kids well educated. End. Of. Story.
Not quite. The #1 school, Dallas TAG, is actually south of downtown, across the river, aka 'the bad part of town'. And is pretty 'diverse' - 30% Hispanic, 17% Black, 11% Asian, 42% White, vs district-wide of 70% Hispanic, 33% Black, and 7% 'Other'.
Their big advantage is that the school is very small (~230 kids), quite competitive to get into, and has very committed students, parents, and teachers (who are far higher paid, and more experienced, than the State avg). And the fact that they don't experience the riots that many DISD schools do, incl a middle scholle 3 mi away just last week. And somehow they get it done with a $ expenditure per student of slightly more than 1/3 what Baltimore spends.
Latin was once the mark of a superior education. (It still is) In fact, half of our Founder Fathers graduated from college where they were required to debate their professors in Latin. And, since most of our Founders could read and write Latin, our Founding documents could have been written and debated in Latin.
That diversity info answers why they’re now #1 according to this survey. It’s kind of hard to compare a school with 230 kids to ones that have 2 or 4x that number in each grade, and come up with the same achievement levels. But when a school’s population is drawn from a highly tightly drawn but demographically ‘diverse’ area, it will fare very well when a significant weight in scoring is put on achievement of minority students.
TAG isn’t “now #1 according to this survey”, they have been for most of the past decade including the last 4 years.
Agree with the comparison of small schools to large, looks like there are only 4 in the top 20 with >1,000 students.
When USN changed the criteria four years ago TAG became #1, before that they weren’t for several years since this ranking was started @ 2007. Originally, the criteria were strictly hard numbers, i.e., SAT average or median scores, #/% in AP, etc. Nothing about achievement of minorities. That changed it completely.
Stuyvesant, i.e., in NYC, draws from an incredibly huge and truly diverse population, and has 3000+ students. They will never make #1, even tho their overall achievement might meet or exceed TAG’s or others. By these criteria, they won’t make top 10 because the pool from which their students are drawn, and the students admitted, includes some terribly wealthy people who happen also to be white.
Similarly, Jefferson here in VA, that used to be #1, won’t see that spot again because the huge pool from which its students are drawn is heavily wealthy, powerful, and white. So, they lose out on that critical demographic factor, even tho more than half of its @1800 students are Asian. Asians don’t count as ‘minorities’ by the folks @ USN or others of the PC persuasion.
These rankings are interesting but it’s splitting hairs, really. Some years Harvard is #1, other years it’s Princeton, or Yale, or Cal Tech or MIT. The fact is that these kids are getting fantastic educations. But that that could be said for schools nationwide.
“Asians don’t count as ‘minorities’ by the folks @ USN ....”
I’d wondered about that, but the Asian % is definitely included in the overall minority % for the high school I attended.
Same for the 58% Asian of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.
Maybe they weight them differently.
My brothers were in honors math and science in high school, but there wasn't an honors track in the things I may have been good at, so I missed out on some opportunities. In comparison with what high school was like when I was there, I can only applaud magnet schools. If you can get similar results with tracking, fine, but somebody's going to complain about inegalitarianism whatever you do to provide an enriched program for students who can benefit from it.
Red states dominate this list of individual top high schools... how do these states do in an overall education ranking? Not as well...
See the US News and world report rankings...
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/articles/how-states-compare
Considering the recent news about the state of education in Baltimore City, it speaks to the overall strength of educational standards in Maryland, that despite Baltimore it came in first.
OK. You make a great point.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
