Local School Makes U.S. News & World Report's "Best" List
I guess there's something to be said about rural schools with small class sizes, good teacher/student ratios and minimal government interference.
U.S. News and World Report has come out with their first ever Best High Schools list and our little po'dunk school made the cut for the state of Missouri! Previously USN&WR would rate colleges in their annual lists but this year decided to give the nation's high schools awards as well. Interesting that a lot of the schools listed for Missouri are indeed smaller schools from rural districts... and in some cases, what they would consider poor regions-as in poverty. A detail of our rank with the stats here.
But don't be popping the champagne just yet, you see, we only garnered a Bronze Award.
That's 3rd place. And there's a gob of schools who met that criteria. So, I guess on one hand it's good and on the other-eh, we're no better or worse than most. One of those glass half full/ half empty kinda things.
But hey, to even get that rank first time out of the gate is purty good by my reckoning. The main reason we didn't rank higher was primarily because of our lack of college readiness type curriculum.
The criteria must have been very strict, because no school got the Gold award in the state, and only 2 were awarded Silver.
Betcha this might be the sharp stick that pokes the school board into upgrading the curriculum a dab.
If you'd like to see what USN&WR considered the El Supremo Mucho schools in the nation, the page is here.
( I can't help but be amused that the high school in the county above us, which touts all kinds of athletic programs, raves about excellence in education and has a much larger tax base didn't even make the list. Less is more in this case, I reckon.)
U.S. News and World Report has come out with their first ever Best High Schools list and our little po'dunk school made the cut for the state of Missouri! Previously USN&WR would rate colleges in their annual lists but this year decided to give the nation's high schools awards as well. Interesting that a lot of the schools listed for Missouri are indeed smaller schools from rural districts... and in some cases, what they would consider poor regions-as in poverty. A detail of our rank with the stats here.
But don't be popping the champagne just yet, you see, we only garnered a Bronze Award.
That's 3rd place. And there's a gob of schools who met that criteria. So, I guess on one hand it's good and on the other-eh, we're no better or worse than most. One of those glass half full/ half empty kinda things.
But hey, to even get that rank first time out of the gate is purty good by my reckoning. The main reason we didn't rank higher was primarily because of our lack of college readiness type curriculum.
The criteria must have been very strict, because no school got the Gold award in the state, and only 2 were awarded Silver.
Betcha this might be the sharp stick that pokes the school board into upgrading the curriculum a dab.
If you'd like to see what USN&WR considered the El Supremo Mucho schools in the nation, the page is here.
( I can't help but be amused that the high school in the county above us, which touts all kinds of athletic programs, raves about excellence in education and has a much larger tax base didn't even make the list. Less is more in this case, I reckon.)
posted by white trash republican at Friday, December 21, 2007
1 Comments:
It looked like half the Gold Medal schools were in California. No Golds in Oregon and only one Bronze in Coos county for Bandon High which is also a small rural school. Bandon's is about 30 miles from me and it's population is only 2,000. The other high schools in the county are in the 3 "big cities" which have populations of 10 to 15 thousand and are not rural at all. I guess they don't score points for meth use.
Post a Comment
<< Home