It’s that time of year again.  The national high school rankings are out. The number one spot has changed.  Most of the schools in the top 20 are the same as previous years.  The formula has been adjusted, but it is still a measure of AP and IB courses offered.  The DC area did particularly well (as those of us paying taxes in the suburbs expect).  And The Washington Post has an article today saying that these schools are eliminating honors classes to pump in more of those AP and IB classes needed for the rankings.

It’s all got Eduflack thinking, though.  We rank colleges and universities, in part, so consumers can make educated choices about their higher education futures.  We compare national research universities. We compare liberal arts colleges.  We compare private or public institutions.  We use the data to make decisions, and to make us feel better about past decisions (and past tuition bills).

But do the same comparisons apply to high schools?  As a product of public schools, Eduflack never had a choice in the high schools I attended.  I spent 9th and 10th grades at Santa Fe High School in New Mexico.  Eleventh and 12th grades were at Jefferson High School in Shenandoah Junction, West Virginia.  Neither is a top high school.  Jefferson High only offered three AP classes when I was there many moons go.  And neither school was a choice.  They were simply my assigned public secondary school.  I don’t expect to see either on a top 100 list in my lifetime.

That said, what good do the high school rankings play?  We can’t use them to make a choice as to what high school we send our children to.  Are we expected to use the rankings to force changes in our own high schools?  Do we use them as part of a school choice push?  Do we use them to separate the haves from the have nots, or to demonstrate to the world that we have successful schools?

As with colleges, we can only effectively compare high schools if we are comparing apples to apples.  The Newsweek rankings simply don’t do that.  We have one list that ranks, theoretically, every high school in the United States.  Urban, rural, and suburban.  High per pupil expenditure and low per pupil expenditure.  Schools in states with stringent grad standards and those with none at all.  Everyone is in the same pool.  Everyone is measured by the same yardstick.

I’ll ring the bell again.  The first step to allowing us to use the same yardstick is to adopt national standards.  If every high school is held to the same standard, they can be commonly measured.  If high school graduation requirements are universal in all 50 states, they can be commonly measured.  If we want to offer a national ranking for our high schools, we should have a national standard they are all held to.

I don’t mean to take away from those schools that scored highly.  Congrats to all, including to my children’s future high school here in Falls Church, Virginia (George Mason High was ranked 58th, due in large part to its IB offerings).  But I’d feel a whole lot better knowing, if we should have to move from our school district, that my son (and his sister, who will hopefully officially join the family by the end of summer) was weighed and measured against fellow students from all 50 states, and was not found wanting.  National standards is the only way to provide that peace of mind to those families not sending their kids to the top 100.