Despite North being known for its high rankings and stellar class opportunities, U.S News and World Report has North ranked 43 in Massachusetts. Displaying a steady decline from place 22 in 2018 and place four in 2010, the new ranking is raising concern among the North community.
Disparities between news sources are present. Boston Magazine, which only ranks schools within I-495, ranked North at number 19. A popular blog, Niche, which specializes in ranking schools and colleges suggests that North is number six in the state.
Educators and students seem to question the factors that are truly contributing to these rankings, and whether North is being portrayed accurately.
According to senior ZZ Sayeed, “North provides an abundance of resources to get ready for college and to prepare their students. It’s just up to the student whether they utilize them or not.”
Thirty percent of the U.S News overall score is dictated by the subcategory “College Readiness.” North is ranked at 79 and it’s also North’s lowest-scoring category. It identifies the percentage of seniors who took at least one Advanced Placement (AP) exam and earned a passing score.
However, according to Superintendent Anna Nolin, this category doesn’t precisely represent North. “Newton does not require kids who are in AP classes to take the test to earn credit for the course. While other districts do require the exam to earn credit on college transcripts.”
Nolin added that many seniors are committed to college by the time AP exams occur, so they are reluctant to take the exam as colleges will not accept any further course credit.
“I don’t live and die by these rankings,” she added. “They can certainly point us to places to look and unpack. But right now as a district, we are creating our internal dashboard of metrics that will judge the effectiveness of the district and that I’ll rely on more heavily.”
Principal Henry Turner questioned the logic behind the College Readiness Category. “From a broad range to the most competitive range we’re exceeding how we’ve done as a school. So it’s hard to accept the data point as valid.”
Despite the ranking, North is receiving double the acceptance as the national rate of students who are accepted into Ivy League schools, according to Turner.
Both Boston Magazine and the U.S. News rank South six places above North.
“I don’t know what the root cause of this is,” said Turner. He added that both schools have each outscored one another in various assessments. “There is no blame to any one individual group and our complexities are different as a whole.”
Turner added that the common issue with rankings is that they pin schools against one another in an inaccurate way. This motivates universities and even high schools to pour money into different areas just to improve their ranking scores, rather than improving the student’s actual experience, according to Turner.
Another indication of how the U.S. News ranks schools is the “State Assessment Performance” category, which is twenty percent of the total score. This section recognizes the statistical relationship between the proportion of a student body that is Black, Hispanic, and/or from a low-income household, and a school’s results on state assessments. The scores equate by comparing an average student from North and student from a minority population, then an achievement gap is produced. North placed at number 56 in this category.
“If there is a one-sided gap whose fault would it be? It surely isn’t ours,” said sophomore Anna Tackie, a student in the METCO program. “We did not choose to have fewer resources and less general information stemming from red-lining discrimination and systemic racism.”
Despite the gap, Sayeed added that North does a great job of creating safe spaces to connect and bond with other students of color.
Nolin added, “I think there’s a persistent achievement gap in many communities, but I think Newton has really invested to try to address the conditions that might create those biases among teachers and within testing regimes in our district.”
A key role in the high school rankings is standardized tests, though its value as an indicator of how a school truly performs is often called into question.
“What’s special about North is the depth that students get in their classes and the range of classes that we have,” said Turner. “That academic experience can’t be captured in an assessment.”
Sayeed added, “The SAT and even MCAS scores are a measure of wealth and how many resources each student has.”
Educators question if students would still score as high on the SATs based solely on North’s curriculum if outside-of-school SAT prep wasn’t so common within Newton.
“I do have some concerns,” said Nolin. “In this district in literacy, we do something called benchmark testing three times a year to track if students are making effective progress in reading. But we don’t do it for math, so there’s concern about mathematics, and there’s been a lot of concern about dropping AP scores and SAT scores.”
North placed much higher at spot six according to Niche. Niche “grades” schools in less data-oriented categories and leaves more room for opinion. The categories they judge are teachers, academics, clubs and activities, sports, resources and facilities, diversity, college prep, administration, and food.
According to Sayeed, “North has an astounding variety of clubs and opportunities outside of academics. From sports to theater, there truly is something for everyone here. That should most definitely be taken into account for the rankings.”
Nolin also agreed that these categories are better instead of the rankings, “because it gives you a comprehensive view of student experience, not just how well they did on a test score.”
Though Turner suggested that the categories are interesting, he added they have their flaws just like any other rank system.
“The experience in a high school is so different from year to year, therefore these calculations are simply problematic,” said Turner.
