{"id":1143,"date":"2007-11-30T19:40:11","date_gmt":"2007-11-30T23:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=1143"},"modified":"2007-11-30T19:40:11","modified_gmt":"2007-11-30T23:40:11","slug":"more-pure-as-the-driven-up-the-wall-chart-rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=1143","title":{"rendered":"More pure as the driven up the wall chart rankings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In commenting on the new <em>U.S. News &amp; World Report<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usnews.com\/sections\/education\/high-schools\/index.html\">&#8220;best high schools&#8221; list<\/a>&nbsp; and comparing it with <em>Newsweek<\/em>&#8216;s (aka Jay Mathews&#8217;s), <a href=\"http:\/\/scholasticadministrator.typepad.com\/thisweekineducation\/2007\/11\/us-news-vs-news.html\">Alexander Russo<\/a> says,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The <em>Newsweek<\/em> list is more pure, focusing on the rigorous and more uniform Advanced Placement courses and tests.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Never mind that AP courses evidently aren&#8217;t as uniform as one might suppose. <em>More pure<\/em>? Didn&#8217;t Secretary Spellings say something about 99.99% pure? Reminds me of the <a href=\"http:\/\/worldcat.org\/oclc\/44082429&amp;referer=brief_results\">More Pure 80s<\/a> collection (does anyone still listen to Tears for Fears or Culture Club?). Kudos and kumquats:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Kudos<\/em> to <em>U.S. News<\/em> for trying to identify schools who did better than average for their students (overall and for historically disadvantaged groups).<\/li>\n<li><em>Kudos<\/em> to the newsmagazine staff for trying to figure out a better way to look at AP participation\/achievement.<\/li>\n<li><em>Kumquats<\/em> to <em>U.S. News<\/em> for scaling the AP results to the 12th grade class rather than the enrollment; their measure still rewards schools with lower graduation rates.<\/li>\n<li><em>One kumquat seed<\/em> to Robert Morse for using the word <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usnews.com\/articles\/education\/high-schools\/2007\/11\/29\/the-ranking-formula.html\">methodology<\/a><\/em> to describe the formula&#8217;s <em>method<\/em>. (It&#8217;s a minor gripe, but he&#8217;s lucky that there&#8217;s no 70s-hits collection with a title like Methodoxology. Hmm: that sounds like the title of a Thelonius Monk composition.) <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I like kumquats, unless they&#8217;re being thrown at me. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In commenting on the new U.S. News &amp; World Report &#8220;best high schools&#8221; list&nbsp; and comparing it with Newsweek&#8216;s (aka Jay Mathews&#8217;s), Alexander Russo says, The Newsweek list is more pure, focusing on the rigorous and more uniform Advanced Placement courses and tests. Never mind that AP courses evidently aren&#8217;t as uniform as one might [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-policy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-ir","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}