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  #1  
Old Posted Sep 10, 2021, 9:02 PM
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dimondpark dimondpark is offline
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US News: Metro Areas by Proportion of public high schools in the top 25% nationally

This is very useful because it doesnt just focus on the top 10 schools, but the totality of schools in a metro area. Very impressed by Los Angeles and Miami-although I'm not entirely surprised either:ok:

US News: Metro Areas by Proportion of public high schools in the top 25% nationally:
63.5% San Jose
60.0% Bridgeport
54.0% Los Angeles
51.7% McAllen, TX
51.3% Hartford
50.9% San Francisco
48.9% Miami
48.9% Boston
48.4% Washington DC
47.5% Milwaukee
44.2% Seattle
44.0% Raleigh
43.8% Orlando
42.6% Chicago
41.9% Madison, WI
40.3% Grand Rapids
39.7% Houston
39.6% Jacksonville
39.5% New York
38.4% San Diego
38.3% Dallas
38.3% Austin
38.3% Atlanta
38.2% Virginia Beach
38.1% Minneapolis
38.1% Buffalo
37.9% Denver
37.8% Rochester, NY
37.0% Baltimore
36.9% Sacramento
36.6% Cincinnati
36.6% Springfield MA
36.4% Tampa
35.9% Worcester
35.6% Albany
34.6% Columbus
34.2% Akron
34.0% Cleveland
33.3% Las Vegas
33.3% Kansas City

https://www.usnews.com/education/bes...d-high-schools
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  #2  
Old Posted Sep 11, 2021, 6:23 PM
pacarlson pacarlson is offline
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McAllen, TX? What's the deal here?
I was surprised Houston is on the list and ranked above NYC.
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Old Posted Sep 11, 2021, 7:21 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pacarlson View Post
McAllen, TX? What's the deal here?
I was surprised Houston is on the list and ranked above NYC.
Texas does take it public schools and the independent school districts very seriously. It’s the vast majority of the property tax bills for many.

But shocking list overall. Jacksonville over San Diego and Austin?!?
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  #4  
Old Posted Sep 11, 2021, 9:49 PM
llamaorama llamaorama is online now
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The title of this article says public high schools but they must be counting charter schools.

McAllen's entry says that its best high school is IDEA prep, which is a charter. It also says it has 31/60 in the top 25%, which is the only way you get an annoying number like 51.7%(rounded). But McAllen's MSA is just Hidalgo County which has 800,000 people and 60 would be too high a number of conventional public high schools in Texas. McAllen ISD itself just has 5 campuses, and 2 of those are magnet schools.

I think what's happening in the distribution of schools by enrollment heavily influences the ratio of high to low scoring ones. There are a handful of big public high schools with a large number of students with moderate scores and then a long tail small charter or magnet schools or early college or prep programs that get counted individually which have higher scores, probably because they are selective.

https://www.usnews.com/education/bes...allen-tx-32580

This makes me question this entire ranking as a proxy for general public education quality in any given metro area. The presence of charter schools and whether or not they are counted as public schools, or whether they exist as separate campuses or programs embedded in a school, would naturally vary by state and school district/city. I also think magnet schools would skew these rankings, if a school district runs a really big magnet schools like NYC's Stuyvesant for example, it still only counts as one school. Going the other way, if a school district runs an alternative school for troubled teens needing remedial classes that dings it unfairly. It goes without saying that a school system that tried to be egalitarian and put advanced programs or tracks into its normal campuses for its brighter students would also be penalized in this ranking. Nevermind that the whole concept of the top 25% gets thrown off if the "best" schools are largely selective small ones that identify as separate campuses.

Last edited by llamaorama; Sep 11, 2021 at 10:03 PM.
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  #5  
Old Posted Sep 12, 2021, 1:00 AM
Crawford Crawford is online now
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Right, the biggest schools in NYC, by far, are the best. The smallest public schools in NYC, by far, are the worst. And I assume this trend holds in many big cities and metros overall.

The largest high school in the U.S. by enrollment is Brooklyn Tech, which is always ranked among the top three NYC public high schools. Looking at the list of largest high schools in the U.S., the seven largest high schools in the country are all top-ranked NYC high schools.

Wouldn't be surprised if this is a national trend. Northville High School, in Northville, MI, is arguably the best high school in Michigan. It's also the largest.

Meanwhile, charters, failing public schools, and alternative and special needs schools, all tend to be tiny. So the ranking doesn't make much sense.
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  #6  
Old Posted Sep 12, 2021, 3:58 AM
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Either New York really dropped the ball or Texas stepped up it's game because I went to high school in both states and back then, the Texas school wasn't even in the same league as the one in New York.
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  #7  
Old Posted Sep 12, 2021, 3:58 AM
dave8721 dave8721 is offline
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For Miami they are obviously including the Charter/Magnet schools, of which there are many. They are free though. I don't think anyone who had a choice would send their child to a normal generic high school. The competition to get into the magnets and certain elite charters is fierce. Those who don't get in go to the ridiculously expensive private schools (college seems cheap by comparison). Spending 40k+ a year to send your kid to high school seems a bit much but people do it.

edit: I just looked it up and the highest ranking normal high school (that you just go to, you dont have to apply to) in Miami-Dade ranked #98 in Florida with 27 application-only Miami-Dade high schools ranked above it

Last edited by dave8721; Sep 12, 2021 at 4:09 AM.
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  #8  
Old Posted Sep 15, 2021, 7:16 PM
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Antares41 Antares41 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
Right, the biggest schools in NYC, by far, are the best. The smallest public schools in NYC, by far, are the worst. And I assume this trend holds in many big cities and metros overall.

The largest high school in the U.S. by enrollment is Brooklyn Tech, which is always ranked among the top three NYC public high schools. Looking at the list of largest high schools in the U.S., the seven largest high schools in the country are all top-ranked NYC high schools.

Wouldn't be surprised if this is a national trend. Northville High School, in Northville, MI, is arguably the best high school in Michigan. It's also the largest.

Meanwhile, charters, failing public schools, and alternative and special needs schools, all tend to be tiny. So the ranking doesn't make much sense.
When I was going to high school in NYC it was Stuyvesant, Bronx Science ( from which I graduated) and Brooklyn Tech. Those were the big three high schools academically. Now with the proliferation of magnet and charter school these lists are often hard to decipher (are they really apples-to-apples comparisons).
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Old Posted Sep 15, 2021, 7:25 PM
Crawford Crawford is online now
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Those three are still generally considered the most prestigious public HS in NYC.

Some might add Hunter and Townsend Harris. But Hunter, while public, isn't run by the NYC school system, but by the CUNY school system. Hunter might have the lowest admission rates of all.

This older NY Times article shows a 1.7% acceptance rate at Hunter. Probably lower nowadays. That's significantly lower than the acceptance rate for Harvard or any U.S. university.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/n...ions-rate.html

Then there are a bunch of newer, smaller public high schools with very good reputations, but they aren't as well known yet as the traditional big three.

Also hard to make apples-apples comparisons bc they have differing admissions requirements, and the applicant pool differs across schools. The big three tend to be very heavily Asian and from Brooklyn/Queens, and the smaller schools tend to be more white and Manhattan/Brownstone Brooklyn.
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  #10  
Old Posted Sep 15, 2021, 7:40 PM
SFBruin SFBruin is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
Right, the biggest schools in NYC, by far, are the best. The smallest public schools in NYC, by far, are the worst. And I assume this trend holds in many big cities and metros overall.
That is true in San Francisco, where the highest ranked, and also best, high school, is the biggest.

The next ranked schools, Lincoln and Washington, are also fairly large, iirc.
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