Brendan P. Walsh

I am very proud of Grosse Pointe North High School.

This past spring Jay Matthews and the Washington Post released their “Challenge Index” which some use as a proxy for the list of the best high schools in the country.  This always incites controversy and even locally has been used almost every year in school board elections by those who want it to serve as evidence of North’s inferiority to South.  Last fall I examined these claims and blogged about it here.

North silenced many of those critics with the most recent revision of the Washington Post list, jumping 250 other high schools in the country and now ranked seventh in the state to South’s third.  A nice recap of the story is here.

Then just a week or so ago, the state of Michigan released its “Top to Bottom” rankings.  Despite North being ranked significantly higher than most high schools statewide, South ranked higher leading some to conclude, again, that North is “slipping.”

So which is it?  Is North the rising star that reached seventh best in the state or one slipping to the bottom of the rankings?

These lists measure different things.  The Washington Post indexes on the number of Advanced Placement tests students take.  Schools that rank highly have created a culture where students are striving for advancement and challenging themselves.  The list is sometimes criticized because it does not comprehend actual scores on the AP tests.  I side with those who believe that student initiative to make the attempt is more important.  Nevertheless, both North and South excel in this regard.

The Top to Bottom rankings, published by the Michigan Department of Education, are based on three measurements: student proficiency on standardized tests, student improvement on standardized test, and achievement gaps between students within a school as measured by standardized tests.

This last category is the main reason North is ranked lower than South. North’s degree of socioeconomic diversity is double that of South’s. It stands to reason when you see the same data for North’s feeder schools such as Poupard, Mason and Parcells.  I addressed this topic and shared data in this post.

Welcome to the Achievement Gap – the greatest challenge in public education. Standardized test performance scales to socioeconomic status.  Nobody argues this is causal, but rather correlational, meaning socioeconomic status does not cause low test scores, but is undeniably a factor in how students perform on standardized tests.

The tale of the tests therefore says this about North.  Despite socioeconomic diversity double that of Grosse Pointe South, the Washington Post rankings reflect that North has created a culture of high achievement an which students self select into more challenging courses at a rate on par with schools considered the best in the state, such as South.

The Top to Bottom rankings reflect that North must confront a broader base of economically diverse students, undeniably a factor in program design and differentiation.  And North proves time and again to be up to that challenge.

How do I know?  Aside from frequent discussions with Principal Tim Bearden who gushes with pride about North and its students, read what North’s students had to say about their Washington Post ranking in a editorial reprinted below (courtesy of North Pointe advisor Andrew Taylor.)  Even though written in response to the Post rankings, I’m confident they would feel the same about Top to Bottom.

This is why I am REALLY proud of the students of Grosse Pointe North.  At a moment they could have claimed “Mission Accomplished” they took the opportunity  to be constructively critical of it.  I think that’s pretty awesome.  They know not everything is measurable in a standardized test.

As the students sort of defiantly challenges the Post, and others, “get to know” Grosse Pointe North.  We’re a community with two great high schools and I for one am proud of that.

Grosse Pointe North student newspaper editorial – “Thanks, but no thanks: School ranking system needs an update”

We are now the seventh best high school in Michigan and in the top 3% nationwide, according to the Washington Post.

The Post ranks schools by dividing the number of AP tests a school takes by the number of graduating seniors. It’s a narrow scope. It counts the number of AP tests taken, not passed.

So why does this one category define an entire high school?

The Washington Post concedes that their rankings don’t measure the quality, but “can reveal the level of a high school’s commitment to preparing average students for college.”

Yet, it is presented and perceived as an overall rating.

The Post also acknowledges that there is no ideal method to ranking high schools. We agree. The infrastructure of a high school is a complex series of balances. Many factors aren’t measurable.

The number of AP tests a school takes is certainly countable. The way a teacher inspires and cultivates leadership within students is not.

AP classes may be viewed as technical college preparation, however non-standardized, true-to-life preparation is equally (if not more) important. The ranking does not account for the variety of extra-curricular programs a school offers.

Clubs, sports, community service opportunities and elective classes provide experiences necessary to move forward in life, through college or not. Time management, adaptation to people and surroundings, problem solving and other skills can’t be acquired through simply taking an AP class or test.

The Washington Post’s evaluation is incomplete, not enough has been considered. On paper, the rankings appear to decipher the bad from the good and the best from the better.

However, in reality the rankings don’t show the best schools.

They do show which high schools have the most students taking college-level tests. It fails to consider that high schools offer more than AP classes in anticipation of post-high school life.

This scale doesn’t account for funding differences either. Some students take the class but can’t afford to take the test.

Economically disadvantaged schools can’t always afford to even offer the test. We don’t have this issue. The classes and tests are both offered to us, and therefore we’re ranked.

We appear at the top of the list, and we’re honored. But the Post doesn’t even know us.