Mercer Island H.S. hyped? Not on U.S.News list at all

[thomasfranklin]

Originally Posted by BellevueNative

Bellevue SD also raises a lot of money from parents and the community, aside from the levies. All things considered, it seems to me that BSD may have passed MI now. When you say that MI is supposed to be ranked #11, do you mean in the state? Certainly not nationally. The numbers posted on the US News site for MI are significantly lower than three (or four?) of Bellevue's high schools. And since they weren't ranked nationally, after reading the criteria for the rankings, it seems to me that the ONLY reason MI would not have been ranked somewhere is if there is a large disparity when it comes to performance of minority or economically disadvantaged students at the school. MIHS may not have very many racial minorities or lower income students, but maybe the disparity was so large among the students they do have that it was a concern. It has been pointed out on this board before that MI is not all rich people; there are affordable apartments in the community, as well.

The national rankings that put Bellevue so high on Newsweek and other lists was because their push for as many AP classes for as many kids which the rankings require for high rankings. MI has no such direction. Recently a study showed that the AP push is counterproductive -- instead of helping, it actually hurts. Read the report here: [url=http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/education-advanced-placement-classes-tests-95723.html?hp=f1]Advanced Placement classes failing students - Stephanie Simon - POLITICO.com[/url]

Be very careful when using ratings. It's very challenging to rate districts, etc. purely on numbers alone. Especially ones as simple as #AP Tests/divided by #seniors (regardless of passage rates). Bellevue is the poster child nationally for optimizing on that calculus. The above report shows that it isn't a productive strategy.