It’s that time of year again, when U.S. News & World Report declares which are the best high schools in the nation. As usual, BASIS charter schools did great, taking Number 2 (BASIS Scottsdale), Number 3 (BASIS Tucson North) and Number 6 (BASIS Oro Valley). TUSD’s University High was ranked Number 24.
So, BASIS schools do a great job of educating students and University High does a damn good job, right? Well, not so fast. I’m sure they all give their students a good education, but that’s not what this ranking measures. It measures how many students at those schools took AP exams and how well they scored. The stronger the student body is academically and the more AP exams they’re required to take, the better the rankings.
A casual reading of the Star article on the subject makes it sound like a number of variables go into creating a school’s score: performance on the state test, performance of minority and low-income students, and graduation rates, all of which are combined with student participation in and performance on either AP (Advanced Placement) or IB (International Baccalaureate) tests.
But that’s not exactly true. That’s like saying a boxing match is decided by the boxer’s weight and how he did on a drug test along with his performance in the ring. Sure, the boxer needs to make weight and pass a drug test to make it into the ring, but once he’s there, it’s all about the mano a mano matchup with his opponent. In the same way, the schools have to pass the state test, minority/low income performance and graduation criteria, but once they do, it’s all about a test-to-test comparison of the students on the AP or IB tests. You can read about the methodology here.
Schools are ranked based on the number of seniors who took an AP or IB test sometime in their high school careers. At BASIS, that’s everyone. Students are required to take at least six AP exams to graduate, so the three BASIS schools got a 100 percent score, along with 14 other schools. Within the 100 percent group, the students’ level of success on the tests determines the final ranking. It’s not much of a surprise that BASIS seniors would do exceptionally well on the AP tests. BASIS schools begin with a select crop of students (yeah, it’s a lottery system, but an informal selection process makes sure most of the students who attend are at or near the top of their grades academically), then they weed out the weaker students as the years go by. Since this year’s “best schools” ranking is based on the 2013-14 school year, let’s take a look at BASIS Tucson North’s class of 2014. When the class of 2014 at BASIS Tucson North was in the sixth grade, it had 95 students. In the ninth grade, that number was cut almost in half, to 55 students. By senior year, only 40 students were left. You can bet those 40 students were top flight, hard working students who aced lots of the six or more AP tests they took.
University High had a 97.8 AP participation rate, 2.2 percent lower than the three BASIS schools. That small difference is what put it at Number 24.
Naturally, BASIS.ed, the for-profit Educational Management Organization that oversees the schools, has already put out its email to the press bragging about the rankings. No doubt, TUSD will do the same with University High if it hasn’t already. But the rankings do little more than state the obvious: that schools with top students who take AP and IB exams are going to do great in a ranking that depends on how students did on AP and IB exams.
This article appears in Apr 14-20, 2016.
Gee, David, you forgot to mention changes made to the AP requirement policies at UHS during the last three years and you also forgot to do what UHS parents have repeatedly asked you to do in these comment streams: analyze trends in attrition rates at University High School. You’re so good at discussing attrition at Basis, and, as you’ve pointed out, TUSD Stats is such a “a statistics-rich environment with detailed numbers about enrollment and attendance starting with the 1996-97 school year and continuing to the present, broken down by gender and ethnicity, school and grade.”
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2016/03/16/crunching-university-high-enrollment-numbers
Given the easy availability of this data, it’s a mystery to me why you apply your research and analysis skills so selectively, always airing Basis’s dirty laundry while leaving UHS’s hidden in the hamper. (One might even say that when it comes to UHS and attrition, you sit on the hamper and try to distract us from the fact that it’s there.)
Some of the above-mentioned issues about UHS did come up in the comments on the Star article about the rankings, though, and I suggest that those who are interested in these issues read that comment stream in full:
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/tucson-area-schools-ranked-among-best-in-nation/article_6d595678-18e7-5096-8596-186db469375c.html?mode=comments
I took your advice and looked up the number of students in graduating classes at UHS from freshman to senior, from the Class of 2011 to the Class of 2016. The senior classes weren’t significantly smaller than the freshman classes: 2011: 191 to 173; 2012: 200 to 182; 2013: 235 to 205; 2014: 255 to 226; 2015: 246 to 220; 2016: 242 to 211.
This doesn’t create a genuine comparison with BASIS, of course, since I charted the BASIS kids from the 6th grade, while I can only start at 9th grade for UHS. As everyone knows, and as I have written in earlier posts, UHS students test in, so they’re a selective group by definition. The U.S. News ratings for UHS reflect a similar selection as at BASIS. They just get their top-level students in a different way.
You’re correct, I haven’t looked at the UHS AP requirements. Please feel free to list them here in the comments so I know how many AP courses and tests are required there. But let me explain why I’ve gone after BASIS so repeatedly over the years. “Education reformers”/privatizers have been pointing to the BASIS success story to “prove” charters outperform district schools, and they’ve claimed that because BASIS uses a student lottery, not a test, the students are a random sample of Tucson-area students. I feel it’s important to debunk that myth. I’ve always said that if BASIS and its admirers admitted that it has a highly selective student body, I would stop making a big deal about the place. I’ve never criticized the curriculum or the emphasis on AP courses. In this post and others, I’ve only pointed out that their U.S. News rankings are dependent on their students taking AP classes. The point is, my criticism isn’t of BASIS schools but of the way their academic success is misused to praise charter schools and condemn school districts.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say UHS is a great school because it takes a random sample of TUSD students and makes them whiz kids. I’ve never heard anyone say district schools, or TUSD schools, are great because UHS students are top performers. TUSD brags about the school, of course, but it doesn’t generalize the way charter school supporters do about BASIS.
If you have kids that love the challenge and rewards of learning – send them to BASIS and University High! Outstanding resources to the public. Isn’t CHOICE great!
Compare Basis to all TUSD schools. Then tell us the truth.
Make Basis take all students and meet their many varied needs and levels of learning, and then let’s compare. Basis does not take all students of varied abilities. Period.
Thanks, David. Of course we don’t know how many losses were offset by transfers in, which do occur at UHS. The actual percentage of loss, without transfer-in offsets, would be higher.
If I understand the way you’re reporting the numbers correctly, the % attrition (not subtracting transfers in) at UHS from freshman to senior year was as follows, for the graduating classes of:
2011 9% (18 fewer students senior year than freshman year, # of freshman enrolling 191)
2012 9% (18 fewer, # of freshman enrolling 200)
2013 13% (30 fewer, # of freshman enrolling 235)
2014 11% (29 fewer, # of freshman enrolling 255 )
2015 11% (26 fewer, # of freshman enrolling 246 )
2016 13% (31 fewer, # of freshman enrolling 242)
The attrition between 9th grade and 12 grade for the Basis class you gave figures on was 27%, much higher, but in that UHS has selective admissions and Basis does not, you would expect their attrition rates to be higher. They are still weeding the non-performers out.
Current AP REQUIREMENTS (you must take these AP classes to graduate; no alternatives offered):
Freshman Year:
AP Human Geography (this requirement was added 2014-2015)
AP Environmental Science (this requirement was added 2015-2016)
Sophomore Year:
AP World History or AP European History
AP Chemistry (required 2013-2014 and 2014-2015; made optional again beginning in 2015-2016)
Junior Year:
AP US History
AP English Language
AP Physics
Senior Year:
AP English Literature
AP US Government
(+ many students end up taking an AP math at this stage, either AP Calc AB, AP Calc BC, or AP Statistics; once you reach a certain point in the math curriculum, there is no alternative to APs; seniors are required to register for 6 classes, whether or not they have accumulated more credits than they need to graduate without taking 6 classes senior year while they are going through college admissions — best guess on this policy is that it allows the school to qualify for the maximal amount of FTE, which translates into more staffing)
That’s a total of 9-10 AP classes UHS students are required to take to graduate, 10 if they are advanced in math when they enter, as many of them are. Students are allowed to decide whether or not to take the AP exam for each class.
The Basis.ed website says this about Basis requirements: “Our academic program involves students taking a minimum of eight AP courses and at least six AP® exams during their high school tenure, with these exams counting as final exams in a given course.”
I understand that you like to focus on disproving the Basis myth that their “students are a random sample of Tucson-area students,” but since you’re in a question-answering frame of mind tonight, perhaps you might tell us a little more about how your thoughts on the educational value of standardized testing and the Opt-Out movement relate to the kinds of secondary school curricula “offered” in these “top-ranking” schools.
I can’t believe this discussion is even happening. Olga Block and her husband are gaming the system big-time and probably getting rich doing it based on their expansion rate. Basis is IN NO WAY an open charter school, lottery or no. They treat their teachers like their students; weed ’em out. The pay is obscenely low for high school teaching. The real incentivizers at Basis are 100% helicopter parents for those poor kids. Every one thinks their kid is an AP 5 away from getting into Cornell.
On the other hand, the rest of the AZ charter school system is reserved either for kids who were booted from a district high school or need an online venue.
Good point, Jim Steele. If you add to that the point that TUSD admin is also gaming the system by adding additional AP requirements to an already too-formulaic, too-regimented academic program at UHS, you will be 100% right — BOTH about Basis and about UHS/TUSD.
Of course it’s Basis who started this game, it’s the College Board who profits hugely from selling these curricula and tests, and it’s the media who created these misleading and educationally vacuous rankings systems that help them sell magazines to gullible parents while they tell us nothing about the real value of the programming in these schools for helping our students develop the knowledge base, character qualities, and intellectual curiosity that will best serve them in later life.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had governing boards and administrators in public district schools who would not allow themselves to get drawn into the rankings arms race, and who found themselves willing to put maintaining a well-rounded academic and extracurricular program capable of helping students develop as they should ahead of the need to place at #24 in the US News and World Report rankings rather than at #26. (God FORBID the school should ever fail to place in the TOP 25 in this worthless ranking system…)
“and it’s the media who created these misleading and educationally vacuous rankings systems that help them sell magazines to gullible parents while they tell us nothing about the real value of the programming in these schools for helping our students develop the knowledge base, character qualities, and intellectual curiosity that will best serve them in later life.”
Thank you Let’s see ALL the dirty laundry, including TUSD’s!
I am disgusted by the number of people who swallow the idea that this “data” indicates whether a student is getting a valuable education or not. Question the assumptions, people!
Yes, let’s hear Safier’s thoughts on ” the educational value of standardized testing” and “the kinds of secondary school curricula “offered” [translate: rammed down students’ throats] in these “top-ranking” [translate: abusive] schools.”
If the helicopter parents who line their kids up for UHS think, as Jim Steele suggests RE Basis parents, their kid is “an AP 5 away from getting into Cornell,” they can think again. Over 80% of UHS grads go to Arizona state universities. They don’t publish this stat anywhere because it interferes with misleading impressions UHS tries to create when recruiting students with their talk of admissions to highly selective schools and millions of dollars granted in scholarships to UHS students, but you can easily calculate what percentages of UHS grads matriculate to AZ state institutions by looking in the back pages of each year’s yearbook and counting the number who have declared for public universities in Arizona by the total # of students listed.
Why such a low percent matriculation at top-tier universities for this supposedly “top tier” high school that places in the top 25 (!!!) in US News and World Report ?
A) the college counseling department is underfunded and understaffed and provides inadequate support to the college admissions process, which is more complicated and demanding for top tier universities than it is for AZ state universities
B) the UHS curriculum during junior and senior years could be structured to better support kids interacting successfully with the significant demands of college admissions without their GPAs suffering while they do so
C) the way the FAFSA calculates “need” has changed: the cost of attending top-tier universities is between $60K and $70K per year; they don’t grant merit-based aid, only need-based aid, and middle class families do not qualify for enough “need-based” aid to make paying what is asked of them by these institutions a sane decision. The understaffed UHS college counseling office doesn’t provide enough analysis and support for successful recruitment of what merit-based aid is available to middle class kids.
In the final analysis, buyer beware: it probably benefits most academically high performing Tucson kids to enroll in one of the local high schools that won’t require them to exhaust themselves with so much forced AP-enrollment more than it will benefit them to enroll in “top-ranked” UHS. They should go somewhere where they can take APs when it makes sense for them to do so, maintain extracurricular activities and volunteer activities, and lead a balanced life.
And what about morals? Teacher quality has definitely slid.
Let’s see ALL the dirty laundry, in answer to your question, I don’t like the overemphasis on AP courses. By definition, they demand that teachers teach to the standardized AP test. That has to be problematic in an area like history, for instance, where there’s a major question of what should be emphasized in the curriculum. But the AP test demands the curriculum cover certain areas or the students won’t do well on the test. The same is true in other areas. Environmental sciences? That’s an evolving subject, and a teacher might want to focus in on one issue and cover it in depth, but the AP test demands the teacher move on to the next subject.
I was always a teacher who tried to follow student interest as well as curriculum. For some reason, my high school decided not to go the AP route. College credit courses were linked with local colleges and universities, so we teachers decided what to teach, we created our own tests, and we evaluated the students based on our own criteria.
The emphasis on AP coursework is part of our overemphasis on standardization. Let’s hope it’s peaked. I know the SAT and ACT are no longer mandatory at many colleges which used to require them, and I believe there’s a trend toward denying college credit for AP courses. So in my opinion, both BASIS and UHS are doing the students a disservice by requiring so many AP courses, though I prefer UHS’s decision to make the tests optional. I think the education at the schools could be just a rigorous without all those courses, and it might allow teachers to be more expansive, creative and student centered in their approaches.
Finally, BASIS and UHS aren’t alone in their use of AP courses, obviously. Though most high schools don’t make them requirements, students on the high track — the kind of students who might attend BASIS or UHS — are expected to take a number of those courses. So the problem extends far beyond those two schools.
A huge point missed in this discussion is that UHS students have the opportunity to participate in sports and other extracurriculars not available at BASIS, if the conversation here is limited to these two schools. UHS students learn the value of balancing rigorous coursework with other activities and teachers and staff support student athletes. Our campus doesn’t look like a tech park as BASIS does and we are shamefully underfunded compared to other TUSD high schools. No one is getting rich at UHS.
Let’s just get rid of this ridiculous myth, shall we, that UHS is “shamefully underfunded compared with other TUSD high schools”? You’ve thrown that into these comment streams before, “Sabasabas.” Wake up: all TUSD high schools are ridiculously underfunded, and most of them do not have UHS’s faculty or breadth of course offerings. The “Cinderella” persecution complex at UHS is about as realistic as the tasteless Barbie doll photoshopped pic you have pasted onto your posts. It is based on ignorance of actual conditions in the rest of the district and it feeds the patently false conviction many UHS-ers have that it’s all as it should be when Sanchez gives UHS a $10K personal donation or gives them new band uniforms first, before the rest of the district. (The current TUSD Superintendent courts the separatists at UHS just like he courts Lisa Graham Keegan and the anti-deseg forces in the Arizona legislature. What an embarrassing spectacle for the TUSD Board majority supported and defended by a local Democratic Party that has almost entirely lost its moral compass.)
As for UHS students having the “opportunity” of sports and extracurriculars and “learning the value of balancing that with rigorous coursework”, get real. What they have learned for the last three years as more and more required AP courses have been loaded into their program is to have no appropriate boundaries between themselves and a constant condition of overload. What they have learned is to obey and take the hits, whether it’s giving up a dearly loved activity or losing sleep night after night or getting lower grades than they should have to get for the amount of work they put in. In theory, a gifted-only high school might be a good thing, but not when gifted kids are subjected to an inappropriately inflexible program so they can produce rankings and win the district awards, without anyone in administration having a reasonable regard for what kinds of policies and conditions actually serve the students’ best interests. THAT’s what’s been happening recently in UHS/TUSD, Barbie doll.
David, you write, “I was always a teacher who tried to follow student interest as well as curriculum [….] in my opinion, both BASIS and UHS are doing the students a disservice by requiring so many AP courses […].
I think the education at the schools could be just a rigorous without all those courses, and it might allow teachers to be more expansive, creative and student centered in their approaches.”
Thank you for that clear and public statement. I did the same when I taught, and I agree completely that when we retain faculty’s right to be “expansive, creative and student centered in their approaches,” we are retaining something vitally important to the delivery of sound education.
That said, let’s keep in mind that there are real and significant differences between just overemphasizing APs, which many secondary schools are doing these days, and requiring enrollment in specific APs, which is what Basis and UHS are doing. I’m not going to belabor the point here, but both in terms of the quality of the student experience and in terms of prospects for college admissions, there are reasons why the former is bad and the latter is much worse and more damaging. When it comes to what UHS has done in adding required APs to the freshman curriculum, the “worse and more damaging” is apparent: they have eliminated one “zone” in the curriculum where they had previously had flexibility to respond to the wide variety of skills students coming from many different kinds of middle schools brought to the table, giving 9th graders breathing room and time to adjust to the changed conditions of high school — and a very demanding high school at that. The addition of AP requirements to the freshman curriculum was, like so many changes that have happened in this district during the last three years, not a change in the right direction.
Let’s see ALL the dirty laundry, including TUSD’s, you get the last word on this (at least where I’m concerned)
How about some facts:
1) The NELS study followed 10,000 students from the end of 8th grade to adult hood. With a huge dataset, it allows researchers to hold all things constant while they investigate the change of one variable. Holding all things constant, the huge association with college success for AP classes disappears. Except for: AP Calculus. The US News and World Report ranking is totally an illusion.
2) When you create a continuous cohort of Arizona students, BASIS students have decisively higher student growth percentiles: 58%. However, when those same students are not in BASIS, their student growth percentile is 56%.
3) The BASIS to Tucson Unified High School cost differential is over $50,000 per classroom.