Where Do Local D.C. High Schools Rank?
Washington Post publishes its annual challenge index.
How do nearby D.C. high schools measure up?
School Without Walls is No. 9, Woodrow Wilson is No. 22 and Duke Ellington School of the Arts is No. 148 in this year's Challenge Index, the annual list of area local schools organized by education reporter Jay Mathews of The Washington Post.
Since 1998, Mathews has ranked Washington-area public high schools using the Challenge Index, his measure of how effectively a school prepares its students for college.
The formula: Divide the number of Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB) or other college-level tests a school gave in 2010 by the number of graduating seniors. The index is not a measure of the overall quality of the school, but the rating can reveal the level of preparing average students for college.
In the case of the Duke Ellington School, students graduate with both a D.C.P.S. diploma and an Ellington Arts diploma. Students major in an arts focus and spend several extra hours a day earning the arts diploma on top of their D.C.P.S. classes. While academics are still at the core of the school, the focus is not on AP or IB programs.
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Judith Bunnell
7:06 pm on Friday, May 20, 2011
I would say Mathews' formula will always prefer the small, selective public schools that have entry requirements and have a college-prep only student body. It is based on a theoretical "average student". If you wanted to measure the "challenge" available to willing students in the schools you would take the number of AP classes available, the relative number of students who took the AP exams and looked at the actual scores they achieved. This would test what is available to the students in the school, who took the tests and whether their preparation in the classroom resulted in real results.