Westport’s Staples High School placed 446 on a Newsweek survey of the nation’s top 1,000 high schools.
The survey, published in the weekly magazine’s latest issue, was compiled by Jay Matthews, Washington Post education reporter and author of �What�s Wrong (and Right) With America�s Best Public High Schools.”
The magazine said its “Best High Schools List” uses a ratio—the number of Advanced Placement (AP) and/or International Baccalaureate (IB) tests taken by all students at a school in 2004, divided by the number of graduating seniors.
“Although that doesn’t tell the whole story about a school, it’s one of the best measures available to compare a wide range of students’ readiness for higher-level work, which is more crucial than ever in the postindustrial age,” Newsweek said.
The top school on the list was Jefferson County High School in Irondale, Ala. No Connecticut high school was among the top 100. But a number of suburban Westchester County and Long Island high schools were cited in the top 100.
In Connecticut, other high school rankings included Weston, 254; Wilton, 367; Conard in West Hartford, 438; Darien, 517;East Lyme 518; Ridgefield, 537; Fitch High School, Groton 634; New Canaan, 635; Greenwich, 643;Hall in West Hartford, 668; Pomperaug in Southbury, 793; Fairfield Warde, 843; and Joel Barlow in Redding, 960.
Darien had the International Baccalaureate program until about the early nineties. They dropped it because parents thought it was too demanding of the students.
Just for comparison, Weston came in at 254, Wilton at 367, New Canaan at 635, and Greenwich at 643. Darien’s not on the list, presumably for the reason Wally mentions above.
There are a lot of arbitrary ways to rank schools, but this seems to take the cake.
Dan said it. This is nonsense. Bronx Science and Stuyvesant both didn’t make the list. These are stone cold top schools.
The last list I saw a year back put Staples right behind Bronx Science at around 41.
That WSJ list that ranked Staples at 41 was just based on Ivy League acceptances. I have always believed it was the students that make Staples such a great school. It really has nothing to do with the school itself or the facility.That being said I still believe this list is way off and Staples absolutely ranks higher then some of these other dubious schools that somehow got ranked before it
First the Westport education administaration told us how great Staples H.S. is, based on the most recent accreditation. Please give us more money.
Now they will be telling us that Staples is not great enough. Please give us more money.
One part of the message never changes: More money, please!
These ratings are a joke. For the most part, Westport is blessed with great teachers and staff who make our schools as good as they are. They should be paid twice what they make. (Yea, I know taxes taxes.) Of course there is always room for improvement, but I am happy that my kids have been raised and schooled here.
Westport has a fine school system of which we should all be proud.
If we are going to start looking for a dark side in the rather broad Newsweek rankings, we clearly all have too much time on our hands.
Obviously we’re defensive about our schools in Fairfield County; we spend so much money on them. But, maybe it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee?
Darien is on at 517. All are great schools and agreed that the teachers and the students really make these schools stand out.
Laz says “Farmington is #125, whatever that means.” Just what does Laz mean? Is that supposed to be a swipe at Farmington? Don’t be jealous Laz.
Richard Ross
Fairfield
STOP ALL THE RAISES IN PAYCHECKS FOR TEACHERS IN WESTPORT MAYBE THEY WILL WORK HARDER TO GET A RAISE IN PAY.
Note that Farmington was #125, whatever that means.
While there is no perfect rating system, there are several different reports that put Weston and Wilton ahead of Staples, which is a change over the past 10 years. It’s also disappointing when you factor in dollars-per-student.
Very helpful comment observer. While I do not agree with the tone, I can understand that it is hard to grasp that all teachers, regardless of their abilities, awards and years get a raise automatically (unlike corporate), I do however think that perhaps an issue is that teachers need to be pushed to learn new aspects of their jobs a bit better. We spend tons of money on new technology and other programs, and from what I hear from my neighbor’s kids and my relatives is that these new resources are rarely used as the teachers can not get them to work, or they take too much time to set up, etc.