Superintendents rankled by school district rankings

May 2, 2008
by Christine Yeres

Spearheaded by Byram Hills superintendent John Chambers, a letter had been going around in school superintendents’ circles for several months gathering signatures.

Chambers mailed it sometime in mid-April to Newsweek magazine and sent copies to Time and U.S. News & World Report.

In the letter 38 superintendents, including Chappaqua’s David Fleishman, attempted to educate the three publications to the superintendents’ dim view of high school rankings, citing as a prime bad example Newsweek’s “persistent efforts to use a single statistic, the number of students who sit for A.P. or I.B. [International Baccalaureate] exams, to rank schools.” [The full text of the letter is printed below.]

Horace Greeley High School has consistently come in high on the list (29th out of 100 in U.S. News & World Report, November 2007, “Gold Medal Schools”), as had some of the other schools whose chief administrators signed the letter. The ranking system they complained of was devised by Jay Matthews, education writer for The Washington Post. It uses the proportion of students who take A.P. courses as its measure, and has as its rationale the belief that schools which permit students other than their highest achievers to enroll in A.P. courses are schools where more students have more opportunity to reach their potential.

The superintendents don’t see it that way. They wrote:

In reality, it is impossible to know which high schools are “the best” in the nation. Determining whether different schools do or don’t offer a high quality of education requires a look at many different measures, including students’ overall academic accomplishments and their subsequent performance in college, and taking into consideration the unique needs of their communities.

Matthews wrote in his April 14, 2008 Washington Post article, “A Challenge Index Boycott of Sorts” that in a conversation with Chambers about the letter he agreed with Chambers “that we were ranking schools based on a narrow criteria, and that high schools are much more than their college-level test participation rates. The Newsweek list ranks every public high school in the country that gave at least as many Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge tests the previous year as it had seniors graduating. We rank because no one would pay any attention to the list if we didn’t. I consider the Newsweek list an honor roll. Only the top 5 percent of the nation’s approximately 27,000 public high schools have AP, IB or Cambridge programs strong enough to make the list.”

Chappaqua’s Fleishman signs on

“More and more magazines are getting into the business of ranking high schools,” said Fleishman, reached in his office last Thursday, May 1, by phone.  “Individuals have been talking to magazines like Newsweek, Time and U.S. News and World Report for a while, but rather than having individuals talking, people have gotten together and are speaking with one voice.”

Fleischman noted that “Westchester Magazine used to do the same, but two or three superintendents talked to them, too, and now, instead of ranking schools, Westchester Magazine just lists the data.” Chambers led the charge then, too, to the offices of Westchester Magazine, persuading them to approach and present the high school data with greater complexity.

Asked whether his Board of Education members knew of the letter, and whether they were required to approve it before he signed it, Fleishman responded “There’s really nothing policy-wise required in terms of board approval. I keep our board informed, but [the letter]’s not a formal document. I was going to show them this letter in a superintendent’s report. They don’t have to approve something like this.”

To the question of whether he had informed the board of the letter, he answered, “Yes, as I copy them on other correspondence. And the spirit of the letter certainly agrees with the Board’s ‘Strategic Question.’”

Potential reaction from residents to being dropped from the rankings

If Newsweek, Time and U.S. News & World Report comply with the superintendents’ request “to omit our schools from your rankings, no matter how well we score, even if you already have our data, or obtain it in some other way,” how would Fleishman respond to residents who believe such rankings are tied to their property values?  “Most people,” answered Fleishman, “are so much more sophisticated than to pay attention only to ranking. It’s so irrelevant. People aren’t thinking about the number of A.P. courses when they come to live in Chappaqua.”

They may not be thinking of “the number of A.P. courses,” or “the number of students who take A.P. courses” either, but they may be thinking of rankings in general, and be pleased, for instance, that Horace Greeley High School was ranked 29th in U.S. News & World Report. “Still,” he insisted, “We know that this is only one little measure and that it would be better to advise families to look at how a school serves its students more broadly in a variety of ways.”

What if the editors of Time and U.S. News & World Report decline to omit the data of the schools of superintendents who signed the letter?  “That’s their choice,” answered Fleishman.  “They have their readers to think of, and they may want to include the rankings despite our request.” The information is public and news organizations can request the information under the Freedom of Information Law.  The text of the superintendents’ letter follows:

[April 2008]
To the Editor,

Cc: The Editors of Time and US News and World Report

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