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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Home away from home
 
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Umm, I'm not obsessed with comparing to Stuyvesant, it appears you are. I already said the comparison wasn't relevant. I'm pointing out that the selective schools at the top of the list have already selected students for the traits that the survey claims to be judging schools on their ability to promote in average students. This caveat is not obvious on casual reading of the report, thus I point it out so readers will not be deceived by the flawed methodology. Why is it so upsetting to you that what makes McNair an extraordinary school is it's students rather than it's staff? BTW You need some remedial graph reading. When a point on a graph is halfway between the lines marked 30 and 40, that means it's at 35. And when the line marked "Asian" is just below 60, well, you can take it from there.
Posted on: 2008/5/22 19:55
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Home away from home
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Brewster, I think you're correct. The methodology they use to compile this list makes a lot of schools look far more impressive than they are. I don't know the JC schools that well, as I didn't grow up here, but I am familiar with several of the top-ranked schools from another state -- trust me, they're definitely not encouraging "average students" to achieve any more than the schools Newsweek excluded for too-high SAT scores. They're simply part test-in magnet program (with lots of access to high-level and specialized courses, and almost 100% white students), part regular neighborhood high school (with virtually no access to APs or interesting electives, and almost 100% minority students). And the two halves barely mix at all -- I used to date a guy who went to one of them, and his school (which made the top 20) didn't even allow the "traditional" students to *enter the building* where the magnet program was housed. On paper, though, it averages out, and looks like a diverse place where everyone, regardless of background, has the chance to excel. This is a blatant lie, and proclaiming schools like this to be some of the best in the country does the students on both sides of the divide a real disservice.
For the record, AP doesn't necessarily equal quality either. All we did in my AP classes was memorize lists of facts and fill out packet after packet of test prep questions. I got to college with credit for eight courses from AP tests, yet had never once had a class discussion or writing assignment longer than one page. Good teaching is certainly not easy to quantify, but judging a school by its test scores doesn't begin to give you anything close to the big picture.
Posted on: 2008/5/22 18:42
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Home away from home
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WARNING: If you don't like long, wonky comments, you'll hate this comment. Please skip it and go find the thread about the naked lady in the window. Anyhow: I'm getting my McNair "economically disadvantaged" figure from the "detailed achievement test" demographic breakdown table that I linked to. The table shows, for example, how many of the 146 McNair students who took the 2006-2007 state achievement tests were male, how many were female, how many were black, how many were white, etc. One section is supposed to show how many McNair students are "economically disadvantaged," but that line is blank. I think that's because the state leaves out data when the numbers are so small that the data could be linked to individual students. On the other hand, the state didn't put the "privacy" asterisks there, and it could be that the state left out that data for some other reason, such as a programming error. Reason to think that the 2006-2007 number of economically disadvantaged kids might be less than 20: In the 2005-2006 demographic breakdown data, the state says 20 of the McNair students who took the state achievement tests that year were "economically disadvantaged." Another consideration: I read the No Child Left Behind definitions data, and it seems as if "economically disadvantaged" includes all kids getting free or reduced lunches. But it sounds as if the definition is really more complicated than that, because some schools count the kids getting free and subsidized lunches differently than other kids do. It's possible that McNair and Stuyvesant count economically disadvantaged kids differently from one another, and it's possible that New Jersey and Newsweek used different methods or different data sets to figure out how many kids at McNair are economically disadvantaged. Also: I think one thing that we don't get from the Newsweek rankings or the school report card rankings is an overall comparison of McNair and the Dickinson honors program. It would be great if the school district could prepare a mini report card just for the Dickinson honors program.
Posted on: 2008/5/22 18:38
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Home away from home
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I am spending way too much time trying to explain that your basic premise for compairing McNair to a school like Stuyvesant is wrong. So, for the last time:
Based on Average SAT scores, Newsweek has concluded that McNair students are average, Stuyvesant students aren't, they are off the charts which indicates the school is serving the elite, and thus had to be removed. And according to Newsweek the reason for this is that Stuyvesant ONLY takes the cream of the crop from ALL of NYC while McNair tries to diversify it's student body by focusing on top students in different racial categories, which makes for a more academically and socioeconomically diverse student body. If McNair used Stuyvesant's model and only selected the top students from the entire Jersey City student population its average SAT scores would arguable improve. Based on the graphs you posted Stuyvesant is around 42% white and almost 48% asian and around 5% black and 5% hispanic. I interpreted Albs comment about 5% of Stuyvesant students being black and hispanic to mean that the majority were white, but I stand corrected. The important point is that the student population looks NOTHING like the NYC population. 42% white, 48% asian and around 5% black and 5% latino is a VERY accurate representation of NYC's population only in an alternate universe. Not going to argue about whether McNair skims for the brightest from ALL of jersey city instead of taking high achievers in different racial categories cause they obviously do not skim from the brightest like Stuyvesant and therefore are not a school that only serves the elite. If the quota system of 25% from different racial groups is accurate, skimming from the brightest in all of Jersey City would be impossible. i.e. McNair can't meet this target if they simply took the brightest in all of Jersey city. If McNair served only the elite their population would look more like Stuyvesant (less diverse) and you would not have parents of bright kids complaining that their kids cant get in because bright kids of other racial groups are taking the spaces and are not as bright as their child. Fact is comparing McNair to schools like Stuyvesant and expecting the SAT scores to be comparable is a huge mistake, in much the same way that is a huge mistake to compare The College of New Jersey to Princeton or Harvard, the inputs (students) are just not the same so you cant compare the outputs without taking the fact that they have a different caliber of inputs into account, Newsweek and others think so, but if doing so makes sense to you, continue.
Posted on: 2008/5/22 18:10
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Home away from home
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Shakata, all your comparisons ignore the fact that what the survey claims to be after is whether the school "motivates average students". His point was that what distinguishes a great school is whether it get average students to take AP classes, rather than just the elite, which any school has to some degree.
McNair, by skimming an elite from all JC, gets a student body exclusively of kids bright enough and motivated enough to get in, even if they are racially filtered. The fact that the best that this formula can come up with isn't as good as Stuyvesant or some affluent towns isn't relevant, and I think the author does his credibility a disservice, especially as it appears many schools at the very top of the list have a filtered student body. Also, your claim that Stuyvesant is overwhelmingly white is incorrect, whites are only ~35%. It is predominantly Asian, just as McNair would likely be if the racial quotas were dropped. Personally, I would like to see the class admitted with an economic profiling system. I just think no one should ever be asked what race they are by a government agency. 
Posted on: 2008/5/22 16:30
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Home away from home
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Brewster, I think you are missing the point. The reason that Newsweek compared McNair to say Westfield or Princeton instead of Stuyvesant or a Bronx Science is because based on SAT scores the average student at McNair looks more like the average student at Westfield than at Stuyvesant.
What it actually shows is that although McNair is a 'test-in' school and cherry picks its students with a quota twist and Stuyvesant is also a 'test-in' school, based on SAT scores the students at Stuyvesant are off the charts, forcing Newsweek to exclude them. Although McNair is also a 'test-in' school, that alone does not make them like Stuyvesant. Based on Newsweek's decision to keep McNair in the list based on average SAT scores shows that the average student at McNair could not even get into Stuyvesant..the standards for getting into Stuyvesant are just higher. Your conclusions assume that the students at McNair are like Stuyvesant students simply because they both 'test-in'. Your premise is like comparing The College of New Jersey, which cherry picks its students to Harvard, which also cherry pick its students simply because they both cherry pick. Then looking at the GRE, LSAT, or MCAT scores of both the schools and comparing them, finding that Harvard\'s are higher then concluding that The College of New Jersey is not doing such a great job because its scores are lower than Harvard's. Sounds like a sound argument until you ask yourself if the students that apply and get accepted to The College of New Jersey have the same academic and socioeconomic profile as the students that apply to and get accepted to Harvard. The same thing is at play when you try to compare McNair to Stuyvesant simply because they are both 'test-in' schools. Newsweek has concluded that, based on SAT scores, the input (students) that McNair admits is NOT of the same caliber as the input (students) that Stuyvesant admits. So comparing SAT scores of two schools that do not have comparable input (students) would be a big mistake. Newsweek only removes 'test-in' schools if their SATs are off the charts because that is an indication that the school is serving a very specific population, the elite. Stuyvesant is more like an ivy league while McNair would be more like a College of New Jersey. Be extremely careful when you are trying to compare schools that are in different leagues. The fact is you trust that Newsweek did their due deligence to clean, normalize and analyze the data with a good understanding of the intricacies of comparing students to each other, you cannot compare McNair to a school like Stuyvesant. The fact that Suyvesant, a school in the middle of NYC, is mostly white should be a BIG red flag. They are scimming from the top of the entire NYC population, without making allowances for the background/socioeconomic status of the students. McNair tries to skim from the top of EACH of the categories they have identified in the Jersey City population using a quota system. Is it perfect, no, but it is an attempt to have a good high school that resembles the population of the city instead of one that is filled with the kids of the city's elite. Generally speaking, if you accept the fact that certain populations do better/are more wealthy than others across this country, then it is clear that by using a quota system McNair accepts students that may not be the brightest students in Jersey City but are the brightest in their demographic.
Posted on: 2008/5/22 13:29
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Home away from home
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alb, I couldn't find on the links you gave where you got that 14%, it wasn't from Newsweek, which listed it at 44%.
Posted on: 2008/5/22 5:45
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Home away from home
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Whew! Thanks for posting the answer to why some top schools were not listed. My daughter is in Stuyvesant and I almost fainted when I didn't see it on the list!
Posted on: 2008/5/22 5:43
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Home away from home
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In case anyone wants to compare report card stats for McNair and Stuyvesant, here are some report card links:
McNair overview report card McNair achievement test demographic breakdown table Stuyvesant academic achievement report card Stuyvesant demographic report card Southern Manhattan school report card links New Jersey school report card home page Observations: - SATs at McNair are a lot lower. (Which might be bad from the perspective of someone who wants McNair to have great SAT scores but is great from the perspective of a parent hoping that one's child can go there someday. I'm a lot more confident that my daughter will score 600 on her verbal SATs someday than that she'll score 700.) - McNair seems to have a LOWER percentage of kids who are "economically disadvantaged" (get free or reduced price school lunches) than Stuyvesant does. (McNair: less than 14%; Stuyvesant: 29%.) - The quota system at McNair sounds sort of annoying, but only 5% of the 2005-2006 Stuyvesant students were black or Hispanic. To me, it seems that it's not great for the white and Asian kids, let alone the excluded black and Hispanic kids, to attend such a segregated school.
Posted on: 2008/5/22 4:03
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Home away from home
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I don't dismiss their performance as unimportant, I just feel compelled to point out this caveat for people who don't realize this aspect of the scoring. Salt as a "flavoring", as it were. Letting lower SAT selective schools in the public school list is like letting a perennial loser Formula 1 race car into a stock car race. The fact that it was constructed with different guidelines means it has an advantage right from the start. The writer says "The Challenge Index is designed to honor schools that have done the best job in persuading average students to take college level courses and tests. It does not work with schools that have no, or almost no, average students" The fact is that no average students go to McNair, you only get there by achievement. So in the case of all the selective schools on the list, they are being honored for motivating the already motivated. He has defeated his own purpose. Don't get me wrong, I also think there's simply no way to fairly compare schools where some get 3 times the money per student and have wealthy educated families feeding them kids well prepared and motivated to achieve. If he was interested in balancing the index, he would use a formula that factored in the school lunch number. Now THAT would accurately indicate the true achievement of the school. Scarsdale making the list is like starting on 3rd base, compared to poorer schools needing to hit homers. But McNair is still a ringer in that game.
Posted on: 2008/5/22 1:53
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Just can't stay away
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That's interesting about Stuyvesant and Bronx HS of Science being excluded. Those schools, I believe, are pure meritocracies drawing from an enormous population (8 million). McNair is sort of a hybrid- a magnet in a much smaller city (> 300k) and engaging in race normalization- using different standards for different races for admission. This may be unconstitutional depending upon how exactly it works (quotas are illegal but diversity goals are ok) and I find it problematic since race based laws are, I think, always a bad idea. That being said, the forumula really seems to work. My recollection of kids from Stuyvesant in college was that they were burnt out from the hyper competetive high school experience and could be kind of antisocial. The kids from McNair seem better rounded and better grounded- perhaps a result of so many coming from modest economic backgrounds and perhaps the result of them not having been junion over achievers before even arriving at high school.
Posted on: 2008/5/21 21:03
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Home away from home
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Brewster your post is exactly why the report should NOT be "taken with a grain of salt" because by removing magnet or charter schools with SAT scores that would scew the results Newsweek is attempting to normalize the ranking so that you can compare schools that are more alike than different based on Average SAT scores. i.e. although Mcnair selects its students the pool that it is selecting from is not that spectacular because if it was it would have the same fate as Stuyvesant and therefore would not be on the list.
The process is not perfect but it gives an idea of what schools are doing with the students they get. Something I learned that I did not know about McNair is the number of students who are eligible for free and reduced lunches, an indication of socioeconomic status. What is remarkable about what McNair is doing is that it is selecting students who show promise from a pool/community that is not wealthy by any means and in less than four years basically guaranteeing the parents that with hard work their kids can gain acceptance at an ivy league or at minimum a very reputable college. Considering the socioeconomic status of many of the students and their parents, that is no easy task. I am not saying that all kids of poor people perform poorly but there is a correlation. So dont just look at scores, whether they be AP or SATs, but also consider the students/parents socioeconomic status. Doing so will help to show just how well McNair and its students perform. If Newsweek was able to put a value on socioeconomic status and factor that into its ranking instead of just listing it, the rankings would have much more meaning as it would credit schools with a significant number of those students and deduct points for schools with a very small free and reduced lunch student population. This would be an attempt to capture the inherent advantages of a higher socioeconomic status on students. There are several magnet schools (schools that are selective) on the list and in the top 100. McNair is not an anomaly. Many magnet schools serve poorer locals so seeing them there and not excluded as a result of SAT scores which are comparable to a school like Stuyvesant, which draws students from the entire NYC population, should not be a surprise because of who McNAir serves.
Posted on: 2008/5/21 17:52
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Just can't stay away
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Thanks. I've seen print ads for properties downtown advertised as being in the "McNair District", and I have heard at least one realtor reference the "McNair District".
Posted on: 2008/5/21 17:07
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Home away from home
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It's about time? Dude, Academic has been around since the 70s. Quote:
Pazman, there is no "Asian" category, just the catchall "Other." But yes, there is no such thing as the McNair district. Students come from all parts of JC (and in some rare instances, cough, even outside JC). I'm curious though, is this something that realtors have been promoting recently?
Posted on: 2008/5/21 16:46
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Home away from home
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Take this ranking with a grain of salt. The only reason McNair is on the list is that it's SAT's are low for a "test in" school. Apparently the cream of JC just isn't that creamy, but it's still a little unfair for it place out schools who take all comers in their districts.
From the faq on the report Quote: 6. Why don't I see famous public high schools like Stuyvesant in New York City or Thomas Jefferson in Fairfax County, Va., on the NEWSWEEK list?
Posted on: 2008/5/21 16:28
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Just can't stay away
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To all people considering moving downtown, especially Hamilton Park.
Beware the realtors who try to sell you on the area because you will live in the "McNair School District". There is no "McNair School District". The school takes only the top kids from all of the Jersey City schools, and I believe the class is divided equally among four groups - black/white/asian/latino. This is nothing new for current residents and readers of this list, but I wanted to put it out there again so potential residents don't get suckered by unscrupulous realtors.
Posted on: 2008/5/21 16:18
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Home away from home
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On the list take note of the schools serving a signficant number of subsidized lunches/free and reduced lunch (SUBS LUNCH). Tells alot about socioeconomic status. Schools with many students who qualify that are ranked high on that list should be commended, studied and duplicated.
Posted on: 2008/5/21 15:59
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Quite a regular
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Agreed CK.
Academic has always been the "elite" public high school in the city...Although I have heard good thing about Dickenson's advanced/honor's program recently. Is it possible City gov is trying even out the other school?
Posted on: 2008/5/21 15:40
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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This is also the exception to the rule and not the standard for JC . Now thats a Shame !! CK
Posted on: 2008/5/21 15:27
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Just can't stay away
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Well done, Academic. Well done, JC! It's about time they've done something right in our public schools....Now, what about the rest of them....
Posted on: 2008/5/21 15:14
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Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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Home away from home
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The article states that "Public schools are ranked according to.....the number of Advanced Placement, Intl. Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in 2007 divided by the number of graduating seniors."
McNair is number 30 and the only NJ school in the top 100. This city really needs to make some more directed investments in improving its public schools. With that young families would be fighting to find a place to live here. http://www.newsweek.com/highschools/?q=2008/state/701/
Posted on: 2008/5/21 15:03
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