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What Makes an Excellent School [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-09-13  

Newsday heralded the 23 public high schools on Long Island named by the U.S. News and World Report in its annual list of the 1,000 best high schools in the United States. The magazine selected these schools from the over 18,000 schools in the country. Rankings are based on a school’s self-reported performance preparing students for college, college-level curriculum, reading and math scores, performance by “underserved” students, and graduation rates. Jericho High School ranked 104th in the country and had the highest score of any Long Island school. Newsday credited these schools with earning their high ranking through innovative educational practices.

Long Island, consisting of two suburban counties in the New York City metropolitan area, has 124 racially, ethnically, and economically segregated mini-school districts with very unequal school funding. The problem for me is that the primary “innovative” practice of the top-ranked schools is probably that they draw their students from an affluent, relatively homogeneous, white and Asian student population with very few Black and Latinx students or students from low-income families. Not one school where the majority of students are Black or Latinx from Long Island made the list.

At Jericho High School, the highest ranked school on Long Island, 62% of the students come from families that identify as Asian, 30% are white, 3.5% are Latinx, and 2.3% are Black. 15% of the students are considered economically disadvantaged and eligible for the free or reduced-price lunch program. There are also 39 English language learners out of a school population of 1,205. Expenditure per pupil is listed on the New York State Education Department website as $33,676.

Westbury High School located 5 miles away in Nassau County did not make the top 1,000 school list. Of its 1,568 students, 74% are Latinx, 23% are Black, and 24% are English language learners. All students at Westbury High School receive free breakfast and lunch. Expenditure per pupil is listed on the New York State Education Department website as $25,510.

This pattern is repeated across most of the United States, but it does not have to be this way. At the #3 ranked School for Advanced Studies in Miami, 83% of the students are Latinx. At the 36th ranked Owens Gilroy Early College Academy in Gilroy, California, 54% of the students are Black or Latinx. At the 6th ranked Dallas, Texas School for the Talented and Gifted, 46% of the students are Black or Latinx and at the 18th ranked Young Women’s Leadership School 90% of the students are Black or Latina.

There are also other ways to evaluate schools. The federal National Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence Program uses very different criteria to designate successful schools. It recognizes schools “based on their overall academic excellence” but also their “progress in closing achievement gaps among student subgroups.” The best schools are those that help students improve their academic performance, not those that confirm that their students already have all the academic and social advantages.

The 23 highly ranked Long Island public high schools on the U.S. News and World Report.

Nassau County: Jericho (104); Garden City (199); Great Neck South (205); Manhasset (251); Herricks (257); Wheatly (305); North Shore (335); Syosset (336); Roslyn (451); Great Neck North (463); Schreiber (603); Plainview Old Bethpage (637); Kennedy (834); Valley Stream South (897); Calhoun (937); Bethpage (993).

Suffolk County: Cold Spring Harbor High School (268); Half Hollow Hills High School East (367); Harborfields High School (373); Half Hollow Hills High School West (561); Babylon Junior-Senior High School (846); John Glenn (867); Vandermeulen (903).

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/13/2193140/-What-Makes-an-Excellent-School

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