Herron High School, an Indianapolis charter school, is ranked 26th on Newsweek’s latest list of “America’s
Best High Schools.”
The list, released Monday, ranks more than 1,600 schools, including 28 in Indiana.
Signature School in Evansville, at No. 7, was the state’s highest-ranked school. Herron was next, followed by North
Central in Indianapolis (511), Zionsville (574) and Carmel (695).
Fishers High School was ranked 1,099th and Hamilton Southeastern was 1,114th.
Other local high schools in the rankings were Lawrence Central (1,276), Brownsburg (1,289), Pendleton Heights (1,412), Center
Grove (1,567), Southport (1,575) and New Palestine (1,601).
Newsweek used a “Challenge Index” to determine a school’s academic rigor based on advanced placement course
participation.
“Newsweek picks the best high schools in the country based on how hard school staffs work to challenge students with
advanced placement college-level courses and tests,” the report said.
Only 6 percent of the nation’s public schools made the list. The full report can be found here.
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Herron High School ranked among nation's best
June 15, 2010
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This super bowl planning has shut out local businesses that were expecting a bump in business. Instead of spreading the festivities around town what we got was hordes of people in one place and a lot of vacant buildings turned into businesses for one week taking away customers who might have spent money in year round businesses. Thanks for all the hype leading up to this event but you wont get my support next time around unless some changes are made to include the local establishments. Now get out there giants and do to the patriots what the city did to us . Shut them out.
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I went this evening and the great thing about the zipline is each rider is a performer. Those that hang upside down the entire ride get huge cheers. And the sound of the ride is way cool. Multiple riders all doing acrobatic stunts is spectacular. It should be called the Warhol ride. Add in the ability to score via phones and you have the Olympics. (the zoo ought to do one of these over the river)
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Actually, completely bypassing Bloomington isn't a bad idea - since I-69 is going to need an offset to get around Martinsville, anyway, just start earlier. No Exit for SR 46, though. None whatsoever. And downgrade SR 37 south of Martinsville to secondary status... and just listen to the howls from all the IU fans and alumni when their (weekly) pilgrimages take twice as long. Well, OK, an exit at Gosport... SR 39 north of Martinsville (not south), Gosport (US231), Bloomfield, Loogootee, Jasper....
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Yup, the best Congress money can buy.
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Pink cadillac gotta be the one
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I hear no end of negative press about schools like Lawrence Central and Southport, and yet I remain confident that they can offer outstanding, challenging educations to students who strive for it. They have the right facilities, they have motivated teachers, but they also have a larger foreign-born and impoverished population than homogeneous districts such as Plainfield and Greenwood, which tout their excellence but apparently did not make the list. Most districts in Indianapolis have a greater challenge at churning out the phenomenal numbers of districts like Carmel or Zionsville because they must also educate students who most like do not have a great deal of support at home--thus, the Indianapolis districts will see their averages go down.
It is a testament to the continued excellence of North Central that it can rate so highly while the district includes one of the most racially, culturally, and socioeconomically diverse student bodies in the state.
However, Newsweek's ranking needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Dig into the details and you'll see that the "Challenge Index" is a simple calculation: for a given year, add up the total number of AP/IB tests taken by all students -- typically juniors and seniors, though any student that takes a test counts -- and divide by the number of graduating seniors that year.
This calculation skews dramatically in Herron's favor because the Newsweek calculations are from 2009, the year of Herron's first graduating class of 20 students. The total school population was 333 according to Newsweek, so the senior class was very small compared to the other class years.
It's likely that the total school population took a solid number of AP tests but that number was then divided by an unusually small number of graduating seniors, resulting in a Challenge Index that was skewed very high.
Again, I don't want to cast aspersions about Herron High. By all accounts they're doing a great job. Just don't trust Newsweek.