[Phys-l] Drop out factory. Was: Re: Phys-l Digest, Vol 40, Issue 12

[Bernard Cleyet <bernardcleyet@redshift.com>]

Jeff!

If I were the head of a college prep, I wouldn't want students  
selected by Newsweek.  Since claimed a charter school,  I presume  
it's subsidized by a local school district.  If so, there would be no  
want of applicants.

Contra wise, I'd think a high drop out rate would indicate its high  
stds. and rigour.

bc thinks Johns Hopkins is "dumb".


On 2008, May 10, , at 13:06, steinert@goasa.org wrote:

> On May 10, 2008, at 11:37 AM, Marty Weiss wrote:
>
> > (You may not agree with the national news magazines rankings of high
> > schools ( I certainly find a lot wrong with them) but Newsweek has
> > begun ranking schools by the number of AP classes they offer and the
> > scores the students get.)
>
> Our highly-regarded 6-12 school has had to do a lot of explaining to
> parents and prospective students about why we were dropped from
> Newsweek's list and listed as a "dropout factory" in a recent report
> from Johns Hopkins researchers.
>
> We have a very rigorous college-preparatory curriculum and an
> outstanding performing arts program, but no academic electives and no
> athletic program.  Every student must take four years of English,  
> social
> studies, foreign language, math (through at least pre-calculus), and
> science (including physics and chemistry) to graduate.  Although some
> students choose to take AP exams, we do not offer AP classes.  The  
> only
> electives we offer are in the Arts: dance, drama, production studies,
> instrumental and vocal music.
>
> Our charter limits enrollment to 370 students which means that when
> students who wish to pursue athletics or electives we do not offer
> transfer to other schools we do not have space to replace them.  We  
> rely
> on a larger than 40% attrition rate between grades 7 and 12 to keep
> class sizes small in the upper grades.  This automatically got us  
> listed
> in the Johns Hopkins report because they made no effort to determine
> whether students actually dropped out or just transferred to a  
> different
> school.
>
> Fortunately, colleges and universities, especially the selective ones,
> know our reputation and recognize that ASA graduates will be among the
> more motivated students they can admit.  However, that does not always
> help on the local level, where a mislading nationally disseminated
> report or ranking can make or break a small school.
>
> Jeff Steinert
> Science Department Chair
> Physics and Chemistry Instructor
> Arizona School for the Arts
> Phoenix, AZ 85004
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Forum for Physics Educators
> Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
> https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l