The latest U.S. News and World Report rankings place Palo Alto High School as number 83 out of about 22,000 public high schools on its “Best High Schools” list.
Feelings about the significance of rankings are mixed among staff and administrators.
“The more feedback we receive on our education practice and process, whether it is positive or constructive, the better,” said Assistant Principal Todd Feinberg.
English Teacher Julia Taylor offered a more skeptical view of the rankings.
“It’s not fair to compare other schools with districts with significant financial advantages such as ours,” Taylor said.
Taylor also questioned the nature of the rankings’ probative value.
“It has to do with where we start,” Taylor said. “Does our high ranking mean that we are better teachers or that we have fertile ground to work with from the outset?”
The ranking system is primarily based on student standardized test scores. The U.S. News and World Report ranking system incorporates disadvantaged student performance and state standardized test scores to determine whether a given school is eligible to be judged nationally.
Once schools have made it through this initial screening, U.S. News and World Report uses “Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate test data” in order to rank schools, according to U.S. News and World Report’s Web site.
Top 100 schools like Paly and Gunn reached their elite ranking status by achieving a high “college readiness index.” The calculation that U.S. News and World Report uses to assign schools a “college readiness index” gives 75 percent weight to student pass rates on AP exams and 25 percent weight to the raw percentage of students who took an AP exam last year.
Regardless of what the rankings really measure and how much they should be valued, they do serve as a reminder to the Paly community of its academic excellence, Feinberg said.
“We are very proud of our students, of our teachers, and of our community,” Feinberg said.