7 South Bay schools make U.S. top 100
U.S. NEWS LIST FOCUSES ON BROAD ACHIEVEMENT
By Sharon Noguchi
Mercury News
Article Launched: 11/30/2007 01:44:16 AM PST
The South Bay boasts seven of the nation's 100 best public high schools - including the No. 2-ranked school, Pacific Collegiate, a Santa Cruz charter school - according to a first-ever rating released today by U.S. News & World Report.
Unlike the well-known Newsweek high school rankings, which are based solely on the percentage of students taking advanced-placement or international baccalaureate exams, the U.S. News list seeks to measure how well schools educate all of their students.
Other high schools among the top 100 were Mission San Jose in Fremont, Monta Vista in Cupertino, Gunn and Palo Alto High in Palo Alto, Saratoga and Lynbrook in San Jose.
Pacific Collegiate is an 8-year-old charter school with no entrance exam or prerequisites. Students are chosen by lottery.
"We create a climate that is understood by everybody: that we're here for the business of learning, and not much detracts from that," said Simon Fletcher, assistant principal of the 420-student school.
The seventh-through-12th-grade school also scored high on state standardized tests administered in June. Pacific Collegiate was rated 902 out of 1,000 on the state Academic Performance Index, or 19th among high schools in the state. The Newsweek poll, released in May, excluded Pacific Collegiate because its students are among those that scored "too high" on the SAT and ACT, the college entrance examinations, and thus skewed the listings.
Nearly 1,600 high schools,
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out of 18,500 analyzed in 40 states, met U.S. News' criteria for great high schools, based on 2005-06 test data. The top 100 schools were awarded "gold medals," followed by 405 silver medals and more than 1,000 bronze medals.
U.S. News looked more broadly at school performance than Newsweek, but campuses in wealthier areas - Palo Alto's two high schools, Lynbrook in west San Jose, Monta Vista High, Saratoga High and Mission San Jose High in Fremont - landed at the top of the list. Silver medals went to Homestead High in Cupertino; Los Gatos High; and Evergreen Valley, Leland and Pioneer high schools in San Jose. Middle College High, an alternative school run by the San Jose Unified School District at San Jose City College, earned a bronze medal.
U.S. News & World Report has ranked colleges, graduate schools and other programs for years, but this is the magazine's first ranking of high schools. The results are available at www.usnews.com/highschools. The top 100 schools will be included in the Dec. 10 edition of the magazine, which hits newsstands Monday.
"We love using hard numbers to look at institutions," Editor Brian Kelly said. The availability of new state testing data and advanced-placement tests prompted the magazine to compile a high school ranking, Kelly said.
The magazine evaluated college readiness, as measured by state reading and math test results, and factored in the performance of poor students - who tend to score lower on tests. The question, Kelly said, was "if you have low-achieving students coming in, how well are you improving them?"
Ten states did not submit or had insufficient test data.
U.S. News also looked at whether black, Latino and low-income students were scoring higher than the statewide average for similar students. Finally, the schools were rated on their AP test participation rate and how high students scored on AP tests.
The result is a more complete picture of education than the Newsweek list, Kelly maintained. In the Newsweek list, released in May, 23 local schools scored in the top 1,200 in the nation.
A phone call to Newsweek for comment was not immediately returned.
Fletcher, of Pacific Collegiate, credited student and parent commitment, as well as small class sizes and shared goals among parents, teachers and students.
"We get them as motivated students," he said, "and we keep them motivated."
Contact Sharon Noguchi at snoguchi@mercurynews.com or (408) 271-3775.
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