Education News
<p/> <p>America’s Most Challenging High
America’s Most Challenging High Schools: National Top 10
Here are the top 10 schools in the national America’s Most Challenging High Schools list, as ranked by The Post’s Jay Mathews:
Read full article >>America’s Most Challenging High Schools: D.C. area’s Top 50
America’s Most Challenging High Schools: D.C. area’s Top 50
Here are the top 50 Washington area schools on the America’s Most Challenging High Schools list, with private schools marked with a (P), as ranked by The Post’s Jay Mathews:
Read full article >>Missouri School Trains Teachers to Carry Guns
Bush, Obama focus on standardized testing leads to ‘opt-out’ parents’ movement
A decade into the school accountability movement, pockets of resistance to standardized testing are sprouting up around the country, with parents and students opting out of the high-stakes tests used to evaluate schools and teachers.
Read full article >>Parents, food service directors debate snacks sneaking into kids’ diets at school
Over the din of sixth-grade lunch hour at Takoma Park Middle School, a student put down his juice and hollered: “He’s a genius! An ice cream sandwich-sandwich!”
At the other end of the table, a 12-year-old boy who had just finished a hamburger began shoving two ice cream sandwiches stacked together into his mouth.
Read full article >>Jury awards $90 million in Prince George’s County wrongful-death case
A Prince George’s County Circuit Court jury has awarded $90 million to the family of a 13-year-old girl who died four years ago after she was struck by a car while trying to catch a school bus.
The family of Ashley Davis, who was a freshman at Crossland High School, sued the Prince George’s County Board of Education after she succumbed to her injuries two weeks after the Sept. 1, 2009, crash. A six-member jury handed down the wrongful-death verdict — one of the largest in the court’s history — this month.
Read full article >>ABC’s of America’s Most Challenging High Schools
1. How does America’s Most Challenging High Schools work?
We take the total number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Advanced International Certificate of Education tests given at a school each year and divide by the number of seniors who graduated in May or June. I call this formula the Challenge Index. With a few exceptions, public schools that achieved a ratio of at least 1.000, meaning they had as many tests in 2012 as they had graduates, were put on the national list at washingtonpost.com/highschoolchallenge. We rank the schools in order of ratio, with the highest (23.571) achieved by the American Indian Public Charter in Oakland, Calif.
Read full article >>Top-performing schools with elite students
The Washington Post’s America’s Most Challenging High Schools list is designed to recognize schools that challenge average students. These top-performing schools, listed in alphabetical order, were excluded from the list because, despite their exceptional quality, their admission rules and standardized test scores indicate they have few or no average students. Non-neighborhood schools with SAT or ACT averages above the highest averages for neighborhood schools nationally are placed on this list. Our sampling of private schools is exempt from this rule so that readers can see how they compare to schools on the main list.
Read full article >>America’s most challenging schools are facing staff cuts and shut-downs
I have been ranking the most challenging schools in the country and this region for 15 years. Rarely have I encountered anything like the American Indian Public Charter High School of Oakland, Calif., the No. 1 school on my 2013 list. It has risen to the top just as its city school board is trying to shut it down.
Read full article >>Alternatives to the Challenge Index
The Washington Post’s Challenge Index, begun in 1998, is certainly not the only way to rank high schools. Here is a quick survey of some others:
In 2007, U.S. News & World Report launched a high school list as part of its expanded rankings of several American institutions, inspired by its popular college rankings that began in 1983.
Read full article >>Catania does not plan to call for full-scale re-investigation of 2008 cheating allegations
The chairman of the D.C. Council’s education committee said Sunday that he has no plans to launch a full-scale investigation into allegations of widespread cheating on standardized tests in 2008, during the tenure of former Chancellor Michelle Rhee.
Read full article >>The methodology behind ranking America’s Most Challenging High Schools
The Method
America’s Most Challenging High Schools ranks schools through an index invented by Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews. The index formula is a simple ratio: the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Advanced International Certificate of Education tests given at a school in 2012, divided by the number of graduates that year. Noted in our national and local tables is the percentage of students eligible for government meal subsidies — a common benchmark for poverty — and each school’s average SAT score, a common college entrance exam with a national average of 1498 out of 2400. The list includes some private schools — noted with a (P) — for comparison. Certain public schools with highly selective admissions are omitted from the list, but information about them can be found online, along with full national lists, at www.washingtonpost.com/
highschoolchallenge. Mathews and Post researcher Bonnie Smith, working with local innovations editor Greg Linch, canvassed schools across the nation for data used to assemble the rankings. The Post’s Jason Bartz provided digital development support.
With Tougher Standardized Tests, a Reminder to Breathe
How they cheated on D.C. tests: Excerpts from new report
How many ways did D.C. educators cheat on the 2102 high-stakes Comprehensive Assessment System tests given to students? Here are some excerpts from a new official report that details how teachers in 18 District classrooms cheated on the exams.
Count the errors
The D.C. Council's Committee on Education is holding a hearing on test security this week, and the description of that event is written up on the council Web site. Someone was apparently in a rush, because the post is filled with spelling and other errors. Even the committee's name is missing a letter in one reference. Find all of them:
Probe of past D.C. test cheating called 'impractical' (update)
(Update: Ed Committee chair won't call for new probe)
Don't expect much from the D.C. Council in the way of a serious investigation into cheating by educators on high-stakes standardized tests in the city's public schools when Michelle Rhee was chancellor.
Read full article >>Sidwell Friends alumni aim to open public charter school in the District
Sidwell Friends, the elite private school known for educating the children of presidents and members of Congress, has lent its support to a group of former students and faculty who are seeking to open a public charter school in the District.
Read full article >>Hawaii Approves Thirty Meter Telescope Plan
At Spelman, Dropping Sports in Favor of Fitness
Yes, Rhee saw the test cheating memo
The education world is abuzz over the publication by independent journalist John Merrow of a secret memo that says nearly 200 D.C. educators may have cheated on standardized tests in 2008 when Michelle Rhee was schools chancellor. (You can read the memo and more here.)
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