Author	Message
me	Posted: Mon, May 21 2012, 1:16 pm EDT    Post subject: Re: High School rankings. Great or not even making the grade? stats wrote: According to their methodology, Newsweek relied on school administrators to self-report data on and opt-in basis. 2,300 high schools, over over 25,000 in the US, responded. So less than 10% of schools participated, and then were allowed to report whatever data they wanted to. Presumably Princeton simply didn't reply. That makes sense. Checking the home prices in a public high school's town is a better indication.
stats	Posted: Mon, May 21 2012, 12:44 pm EDT    Post subject: Re: High School rankings. Great or not even making the grade? According to their methodology, Newsweek relied on school administrators to self-report data on and opt-in basis. 2,300 high schools, over over 25,000 in the US, responded. So less than 10% of schools participated, and then were allowed to report whatever data they wanted to. Presumably Princeton simply didn't reply.
guestnews	Posted: Mon, May 21 2012, 11:30 am EDT    Post subject: Re: High School rankings. Great or not even making the grade? me wrote: To prove something is wrong, you just need to present a single negative case. In this case, we know Newsweek's ranking methodology is flawed because it does not even include PHS in their top 1,000 list, so just ignore their flawed ranking. I sense you were trying to be sarcastic, but what you wrote is actually true. It usually only takes one piece of bad data to undermine the credibility of something like this. It doesn't mean the "methodology" is necessarily flawed, but at the very least the data aggregation is. The US News one is no more credible. They already got bad press when they ranked a school in Henderson, NV near the top of the list only to have the principal of the school come out and say they had 3-times as many students, a dramatically worse student-to-teacher ratio and far, far lower graduation rate than the magazine reported on its list. The problem is there is no real integrity behind these lists anymore. The magazines don't spend the time or money to do, or hire a third party to do, a real study. They just collect a hodge-podge of public data that itself is often second-hand and not vetted or official. Then they don't have qualified professionals parsing it out, so the results are largely arbitrary. The whole exercise is to generate headlines and cross-links online to boost traffic and search engine optimization. They know everyone will look to see how their schools rank and right local articles, reference it in blogs and forums. They don’t care if it’s right, just that its talked about.
me	Posted: Mon, May 21 2012, 11:14 am EDT    Post subject: Re: High School rankings. Great or not even making the grade? To prove something is wrong, you just need to present a single negative case. In this case, we know Newsweek's ranking methodology is flawed because it does not even include PHS in their top 1,000 list, so just ignore their flawed ranking. BTW, if you use postcode (08512) to define "Cranbury," then it's not just the Cranbury TWP.
Reason	Posted: Mon, May 21 2012, 10:56 am EDT    Post subject: Re: High School rankings. Great or not even making the grade? These surveys are always flawed. In top places to live Cranbury is never ranked not even in Nj monthly. Yet in some major publications New Brunswick comes up.
student	Posted: Mon, May 21 2012, 10:42 am EDT    Post subject: High School rankings. Great or not even making the grade? Both US News and Newsweek came out with their list of best high schools within the last month. US News ranked Princeton the 10th best in NJ and #196 nationally: http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/new-jersey Now Newsweek ranked the top 1,000 and Princeton doesn't even make the list. WWP's two high schools ranks about the same in both lists: http://www.thedailybeast.com/content/newsweek/2012/05/20/america-s-best-high-schools.html Slight differences in methodology but shouldn't be enough to go from top-200 nationally to not even ranked. I guess these lists must be pretty flawed, so while we can probably dismiss not ranking in Newsweek it also means we can't take much stock in supposedly being top 10 in the state in US News.