Posted on 06/17/2007 10:06:06 AM PDT by Smartaleck
Unless you have worked in the Orange/Osceola school system you probably would not know the problems. The reality is A-rated schools are not always what they appear to be.
Smarty, what is your connection (other than a google search) to these Florida schools and why do you disagree with my comment?
BTW: I personally know the county superintendants in Polk and Orange counties.
Winter Park and Lake Mary high schools are pretty good, but I just heard the IB program at W.P. is going to a lottery system next year.
My town has number 40 and 47. Our daughters went through number 40. We’re raising our grandson. He will not go through this system.
New England has a very complicated attitude towards public education. They did a lot to pioneer it in the 19th century and even before that, but mostly neglected public higher education for a century after that at least in comparison with the Middle West. Neglect of charter schools and magnet schools may be part of the same pattern.
Also, everything is divided up into towns with their own established bureaucracies and monopoly advantages. Elsewhere something might be done at the county level or in some other way. You do see vocational-technical schools on a multi-town basis, but nobody's challenged local public schools with an academic magnet program.
It's a pity. Some of the regional high schools in the wealthier suburbs are very good, but they don't really push or inspire students like some of the ones written up in US News apparently do. I don't get the feeling that they see the need. All the children are already "above average," so why bother?
The other side of the coin may be a higher tolerance for private preparatory schools. Elsewhere, parents might get together and form a charter school. In New England they try to get tuition together to attend an established private school.
Why New Englanders don't go in for things like the International Baccalaureate, like these other schools, I don't know. I've never heard of such a thing apart from articles like this. And schools like Boston Latin and Latin Academy are examination schools and don't make this list.
It's not for lack of trying on the part of parents. The teachers unions are VEY powerful here, and they block almost every attempt to open new ones. They seem to think that if people have a problem with the public schools, that it's THEIR problem, it couldn't possibly be the schools' problem!
90% of graduating students will score 90 or above 90% of the time on tests of Classical Latin, Calculus, English Composition, American and World History, the Constitution of the United States, Nutrition, the physical and natural sciences, the Bible, and physical fitness. The school gets no credit for diversity, impoverishment, political correctness, sexuality, banality, antiestablishmentarianism, football or basketball.
I can't profess to know much about public high schools except that they weren't too good when I was a kid (thirty years ago), and while they appear to have gotten more layers of bureaucracy slathered on, the cirriculum is still watered-down and too overly-PC for anything of any great challenge or value to be learned there.
My kids are still at the elementary stage, and both are in the gifted programs there ("gifted" = standard cirriulum, imho). One more year to go, and if my oldest boy, age 10, can keep his grades up, he will be going to Pine View in Sarasota, which is indeed an excellent and very challenging place to be. My daughter will follow a year after him, at the rate she's going.
But my kids are lucky -- they are naturally smart (must be my wife's genes $;-), and have a solid mom and dad backing them up and pushing them forward day after day. For kids lacking that, from what I have personally observed, the "standard" public school educational fare is pathetic in the extreme.
The gifted, IB, magnet, AP programs can really help children excel. The problem is this: the study was tilted in favor of access to magnet programs (IB, AP, etc); the county has been putting magnets in poorly performing schools to boost rankings.
Here's the example, Oak Ridge HS offers magnet program for advanced students, however the school overall gets failing marks: 76% Sophmores at Oak Ridge failed the reading part of the FCAT.
Oak Ridge was caught cheating on the FCAT tests - they were dropping low-performing students from enrollment to artificially raise their test scores. It's one of 3 F-rate high schools in Orange county.
Another one (University) had a student stabbed to death on campus during a gang fight last year. The perp just got 60 years.
At any rate, I would take these school rankings with a grain of salt.
Very Strongly. And whenever possible they prefer to put their kids in private school. They'll borrow the money if they have too. Or use scholarships their kid has earned.
Something I tend to do anyway whenever I see the words "Washington Post". $:-)
“Are Asians Minorties or not?”
The answer is “yes” and “no.” Asians are 4.3% of the US population so that is definitely a minority group.
However Asians tend to be overrepresented in educational statistics so they don’t qualify as an “underrepresented minority” in such data.
The truth (that few like to admit) is that performance of schools largely lies in the demographics of the student body.
Not so much race or anything, but the overall values of the students and their parents. Some kids just don’t give a sh*t about learning, and NO school and NO amount of money dumped into said school will make a whit of difference. It’s all in how they’re raised and what value parents place on education.
Homeschool kids do better not so much because homeschooling is INHERENTLY better, but because the parents doing the homeschooling obviously do better at instilling the value of education in their children. Same goes for private schools.
Now, on the subject of public schools being socialist indoctrination centers, that’s a different subject than academic performance, and is a good argument in favor of private schools and/or homeschooling, but not the point of my post.
“Most of the schools are in the South or Southwest.”
I noticed too. I think the South had been beat upon for so long “they’ve” finally done something about it.
When Bush was Gov of TX he put forth a myriad of changes, one of which was to not settle for mediocrity but to challenge students, especially the bright ones.
“Graduation rates are NOT included in this “ranking.” The number of graduating seniors are (to normalize the number of students at each high school).”
I see. They’re there but they’re not there.
FAQ 3 and 4 indicate what the grad rates mean and how it is factored in.
As to AP classes, I think of it this way. Even if a kid didn’t master the course as you say, if a glass is filled past capacity, more will remain than if too little liquid is added.
“Smarty, what is your connection (other than a google search) to these Florida schools.”
Other than my brother living there for 50 years and it being a second home, none.
Across Florida, 1,941 public schools earned As or Bs, down from a high of 2,077 last year. And 302 earned Ds or Fs, more than double the 143 that got lousy grades last year. The number of F-grade schools hit 82, an all-time high since Florida started grading schools in 1999.
One of the ranking schools on your list, Seminole dropped to a "C" rating this year. Also FLA ranks 43rd in Expenditures ($) per Student in Public K-12
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