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.
- Home
- NEWS
- REGIONAL
- THIS WEEK'S PAPER
- BLOGS
- Multimedia
- OPINION
- A&E
- LISTS
- PEOPLE
- EVENTS
- Classifieds
- Subscribe
IBJNews
Herron High School ranked among nation's best
June 15, 2010
Sponsored by
ADVERTISEMENT
on Facebook & Twitter
on Facebook & Twitter
 Follow IBJ's Tweets on these topics: |
||
| @IBJNews | @Propertylines | @IBJTheScore |
| @IBJArts | @IBJHealthcare | @IBJDining |
| @IBJLists | @IBJSmallbiz | |
-
"And the success of the Indiana GOP to not allow an expansion of Medicaid had nothing to do with Indiana hospitals' financial woes? Fixed that for you; editorial bias rebalanced. Seriously, there are so many things wrong with Obamacare that the only way one can view it as a success is to assume that it was designed to fail our way into a government single payor healthcare system. The system is complex, creates huge regulatory burdens and overhead and yet still does not have adequate means to control escalating health care costs. But then when you elect a 10th grade math drop out with no quantitative reasoning skills to be President of one of the world's most important economies in troubled times, you can't really be surprised by blatant stupidity.
-
No NIMBYs here to chase off a decent development. We don't need tons of parking and we'd happily play the role of host to a downtown Whole Foods.
-
Whatever you do, don't change a single thing about Broad Ripple. I want it to look just like it did in the late '70s, with 30% of the north side of Broad Ripple Avenue burned out and plenty of places to park. That's right Broad Ripple, NEVER CHANGE. Let the world pass you by, don't improve your empty, abandoned lots full of weeds. Someday someone will want to film a zombie movie here.
-
Hollywood could step in and make a movie about the history about this forlorn series. It could be a full celebrity cast of characters. WOW. http://www.advanceindiana.blogspot.com/2013/02/indiana-taxpayers-forced-to-pay-for.html
-
This shouldn't come as a shock to many. Austin is a great city, and Indy needs to take some notes. Austin invests in decent transit options, has a highly educated workforce, embraces a creative class, and --despite being the state capital-- is not micromanaged by rural and suburban legislators. Want Indy to grow? Invest in the city (i.e. spend money). Raise taxes a bit, and use the money to improve education. And keep the state legislature out of Indy the other 9 months of the year.
ADVERTISEMENT
Back to TopCopyright © All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms of Use.
Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing.
Additional Hosting & Delivery by
IBJ Conversations
6 Comments
Add Comment
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.