Newsweek school rankings

According to a ranking in the current Newsweek, Edgemont is the 26th best public high school in the country, the fourth best in New York State and the best in Westchester County.

Two years ago, Newsweek ranked Edgemont 16th in the country, third in the state and first in the county.

It's nice to be recognized, and Edgemont certainly is a top school, but I'm skeptical of the methodology Newsweek uses. Here is Newsweek's explanation of its methodology:

Public schools are ranked according to a ratio devised by Jay Mathews: the number of Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests taken by all students at a school in 2004 divided by the number of graduating seniors.

Seems to me that one could have a first-rate school without a high number of AP or IB tests, and similarly one could have a second- or third-rate school where lots of kids take AP or IB tests.

Does any serious observer believe that Scarsdale (#208) should be ranked 159 places worse than Dobbs Ferry (#49)? From what I know, Dobbs Ferry is indeed supposed to be an excellent school; my wife and I considered Dobbs Ferry when choosing Westchester communities (a decision in which schools played a major part). But my point is that most knowledgeable people do not consider Dobbs to be significantly better than Scarsdale.

One school (Lower Merion, PA) was ranked 121 in 2003 yet did not make the top thousand this year. Why? According to the list compilers,

the school had decided to stop paying AP test fees and stop requiring students in the courses to take the tests....

So, despite the likelihood that Lower Merion has not drastically declined as a school, its ranking has.

Updates:

• A teacher at the #9-ranked school has "a few doubts about how the study is conducted," but also seems sympathetic to the methodology:

  I understand that Mr. Mathews is looking for schools where every student is encouraged to take challenging classes and achieve as much as they possibly can. And that certainly describes our school.

• The above-cited teacher's husband weighs in:

  Yes, the criterion is mostly bogus. But as the inimitable Hans and Franz would sniff, "Complaints about the criteria are for girly-men losers!"

• Meanwhile, "self-styled recovering academic" Thomas Lifson describes survey designer Jay Matthews as

  by far, the best education writer in the country.

• Lawyer Pejman Yousefzadeh writes that it is lunacy that schools with strict academic admissions criteria like Bronx Science and Stuyvesant were omitted from the rankings.
  
  
• The Journal News has excerpted the 38 Westchester, Putnam and Rockland County schools from the list:

  School rankings
  
  The rankings were computed by taking the number of AP and/or IB tests taken by all students at a school in 2004 and dividing it by the number of graduating seniors.
  
  26. Edgemont High School
  42. Horace Greeley High School, Chappaqua
  49. Dobbs Ferry High School
  96. Briarcliff High School
  97. Rye Neck High School
  98. Bronxville High School
  120. Harrison High School
  124. Hastings High School
  130. Irvington High School
  131. John Jay High School, Katonah-Lewisboro
  139. Byram Hills High School
  194. Mamaroneck High School
  198. Blind Brook High School
  208. Scarsdale High School
  232. Hendrick Hudson High School
  256. Ardsley High School
  267. Pleasantville High School
  274. Fox Lane High School, Bedford
  283. Croton Harmon High School
  292. Sleepy Hollow High School
  326. Spring Valley High School
  349. Ossining High School
  351. Clarkstown South High School, West Nyack
  365. Pelham Memorial High School
  391. North Salem High School
  457. Pearl River High School
  470. New Rochelle High School
  477. White Plains High School
  480. Tappan Zee High School, South Orangetown
  497. Eastchester High School
  500. Suffern High School
  510. Lakeland High School
  570. Haldane High School
  703. Rye High School*
  860. Somers High School
  866. Yorktown High School
  936. Clarkstown North High School, West Nyack
  1036. Woodlands High School, Greenburgh
  
  * Rye district officials say that due to their own reporting error, their district actually ranks 85th rather than 703rd.

  Note that all the schools on this list (yes, even number 1036) are in the top 4% of the 27,468 schools included in the survey.