Once again, BASIS swept the U.S. News & World Report’s list of best public high schools, taking five of the top seven places. University High placed number 15. Does that mean BASIS has five of the seven best schools in the country and University High is the 15th best? Only if you think “best school” means a place filled with high achieving students who take lots and lots of Advanced Placement classes and tests. The more AP courses seniors have taken and the more tests they’ve passed, the higher a school’s ranking. AP courses are the basis of the BASIS curriculum. University High emphasizes the courses, but not quite as much.
Unfortunately, if you read the Star’s misleading front page article, you get a different, and incorrect, picture of how a high school makes it to the top.
To get a high U.S. News ranking, you have to jump over a few hurdles, like performance on state tests and graduation rates, to be in contention. Once you’ve cleared those hurdles, a school’s ranking is based totally—not partially, totally—on how many Advanced Placement classes seniors have taken and how well they do on the tests. That’s it. This year, the contest didn’t even include the International Baccalaureate program as it has in the past. It was all AP, all the time.
Someone who read the Star article would think the ranking uses a more complex, inclusive formula where AP course work is “considered.” Nope. Not so. Here’s what the Star wrote about the ranking process with my comments and corrections in brackets.
The list, published annually, looks at data from more than 22,000 schools focusing on student outcomes with an emphasis on graduation rates [Nope. If graduation rates are 75 percent or higher, you make it into the all-important AP round.] and state proficiency tests [Nope. If you’re in the top 10 percent in state test scores, or lower if you have more economically disadvantaged students, you make it into the all-important AP round]. Diversity [Doesn’t matter if you’re in the top 10 percent in state test scores], enrollment [Of very little importance], participation in free and reduced-price lunch programs [Nope. BASIS schools don’t have free/reduced lunch, so under that category, U.S. News simply says “Not Applicable”] and Advance Placement are also considered [Misleading. AP isn’t simply considered, it’s the only thing that matters once a school makes it into the all-important final round].
BASIS schools are filled with a select group of conscientious, high achieving students. (A few weeks ago, BASIS publicly acknowledged it’s an academically selective school, so, finally, we can agree on that point). The schools require that students take lots and lots of AP courses and tests across the curriculum. The more AP courses students take in multiple areas of the curriculum and the more students who pass the exams, the higher a school scores. That’s the secret of the BASIS rankings.
If you have a motivated, high achieving child who’s willing to work hard and take lots of AP classes, BASIS could be a good fit. Just be sure to enter your child in one of the early grades. BASIS rarely accepts new high school students.
This article appears in Apr 20-26, 2017.
Ducey is cumming all over himself ….
Winds…My Sweet Lord!
That has to be your best comment ever!
This is education culture. Test scores, test scores, test scores.
Yet, for 20 years the academic gains, the productivity, of American schools have gone down.
Education is substantially more complex than the average policy makers believes.
Focusing on test scores doesn’t work.
It doesn’t even work for BASIS. Less than half their graduates go on to graduate from college.
If you want to prove a point and get the public to start thinking the way you want them to do all you have to do is create the illusion with smoke and mirrors. It’s especially easy when you are pulling all the strings and pushing all the buttons to make your thingamabob look more beautiful and so much more intelligent and worthy than the other whatchamacallit. Republicans use this ruse over and over and it seems to work because the public believes everything at face value and never pulls back the curtain to reveal the phony behind it. If you trust anything that a Republican supports then you are already too far gone to redeem. There are only two motivators for Republicans and they are POWER and MONEY. They do not know how to govern, just to rule. They have the compassion of an iguana and as a group they are more cohesive than a band of fire-ants regardless of whether their objectives are right or wrong. The day that I trust ANY Republican is the day they pry my computer from my dead, cold hands.
Tucson should be damn proud to have these most incredible schools. No one is required to attend, but if you do you get a world class intense education FOR FREE! But people need to complain about something…
The real story is that the all-AP curricula that successfully game the system to win these awards do not work as valid forms of college preparation, but that’s a story David Safier has for four solid years refused to touch, to the detriment of students subjected to these abusive programs and to the detriment of parents who look to education commenters in the media to try to understand which schools will most benefit their students. It’s especially sad when EDUCATORS like Safier fail to use their media platforms to disabuse the public about the actual quality of the College Board / AP racket.
I see University High has successfully climbed up a few notches again. They did that in part by adding two inflexible AP requirements to the FRESHMAN curriculum and by adding a pre-freshman year summer boot camp program where they try to give their hapless recruits the “skills” needed to cram for mindless multiple choice tests. Also by requiring seniors to register for a full course load including many AP classes whether or not they needed these classes to meet graduation requirements.
Many in the media and politics seem to be intent on disparaging and undermining the decent private educational programs left and the families using them. The charter- and district-connected political networks haven’t found a way to profit from small scale, locally controlled Independent Schools or from schools affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, so economic disincentives must remain in place to discourage constituents from using these kinds of institutions. Meanwhile, in terms of the actual educational value of programs in publicly funded schools, charters and districts are engaging in a race to the bottom to see who can more completely transition to a corporatized, mindless and superficial memorization-and-regurgitation factories first.
Hurray for “democracy.” (Corporatocracy?) It’s producing great results these days, across the board.
My son went to UHS and he has a first class intellect they helped develop. I did not ever see him working simply to memorize useless information. How is “gaming the system” any different from simply playing the game, the game of life. If you want an academic, intellectual curriculum you by and large have to take tests to measure achievement. There are other ways, but they are pretty much alternative models, which have their own place, but are not part of a standard public school system. Any way you cut it, the acheivements of UHS and Basis are pretty awesome and for all these kids’ hard work, I hear a lot of cynical adults putting them down.
Some feel that education is not a game and should not be largely about learning how to anticipate what corporate employees want you to answer on machine graded multiple choice tests. The “skills” required to successfully complete those kinds of tasks have little to do with what high quality liberal arts colleges will be asking students to do: read and interpret complex texts, conduct and analyze research, think critically, and write well and at length. I’ve been a teacher in both private and public schools and a parent at UHS and at a college prep private. My concerns about UHS are not a case of “sour grapes.” My UHS student took 9 AP exams and got 4s and 5s on all of them. He had a higher than 4.0 weighted GPA and perfect Board scores in math. He’s a bright, hard working kid and is doing well in college, but he had to learn some of the things in college that his sibling who attended a college prep private school had solidly in place before the end of his junior year in high school. Why is this? Because the curricula were better in the private school and the faculty and administration understood the role that faculty should play in designing interdisciplinary, complex projects that draw on and developed a much broader range of skills than a multiple choice test or a cookie-cutter essay question ever could.
The critiques of AP cram curricula and the doubts expressed RE the legitimacy of media-generated rankings like US News and World Report you read here and elsewhere are not about putting hard working students down. Among educators, these discussions are about understanding what it actually benefits students most to spend their time doing and how we can give them the best kind of preparation possible both for college-level work and to be constructive citizens and strong contributors in our communities.
Sorry to say it, but in this country we seem to want everything to be easy and cheap. Public is cheaper than private and cramming for a multiple choice test is a lot easier than conducting original research or writing an excellent essay. Easier for the teachers, and easier for the students. Unfortunately for the kids enrolled in these cram programs, it is also considerably less valuable educationally.
Safir is an idiot and a political gadfly with allegiance solely to Grijalva and Foster.
He knows nothing about what it takes to develop, teach and support successful students.
Both UHS and Basis clearly state that they are rigourous college preparatory high schools. This means that students who chose to go there are planning to go on to a 4-year college upon graduation.
The fact that they have an AP-focused curriculum seems entirely consistent with their stated mission.
More telling is the fact that these schools consistently have the highest AP and SAT scores in the entire state.
In UHS’ case, an even important measure is that UHS alums generally have the highest cumulative GPA of all high school graduates entering the UofA.
Safir seems to think that they have something to apologize for.
With respect to USNWR high school rankings, they may provide bragging rights, but they are meaningless and most serious college admissions officers give them absolutely no weight.
As a former Yale University dean of admissions once observed regarding these rankings “U.S. News and World Report, a magazine that has actually gone defunct and exists now only as a purveyor of rankings to exert undue influence.”
Better to look further at UHS’ and Basis’ graduation rates, colleges that graduates are accepted to, whether their students are prepared for college when they arrive, and what the 4-year graduation rate is for those incoming freshman.
I sincerely doubt that either UHS or Basis would put a top rating from USNWR over more tangible measures like college readiness, acceptance, matriculation and graduation.
David Safier is a retired professional educator who has a great deal of direct experience with what does and does not help students prepare to succeed in college. His analysis of what factors do and do not affect placement in the USNWR rankings is helpful and a necessary corrective to poor coverage of these rankings which occurred elsewhere in the media. I wish David Safier (and other education policy analysts locally) would take more interest in educating the public about to what degree AP cram schools should properly be considered “college preparatory” programs, but, disappointingly, that is not a topic he has chosen to address, though I believe he would be well prepared to address it if he chose to do so.
The previous commenter states, “I sincerely doubt that either UHS or Basis would put a top rating from USNWR over more tangible measures like college readiness, acceptance, matriculation and graduation.”
From what I saw of UHS as a parent, UHS has no measure of college readiness other than AP scores. They do not plan their curricula based on the faculty’s judgment about how to develop students’ ability to read complex texts, write essays or research papers, conduct independent research, or identify a strong area of interest which they wish to pursue in college or professionally. They planned their curricula exclusively based on maximizing students’ scores on AP exams which measure your ability to cram and memorize content more than they measure the kinds of abilities students will actually need in college and in most professions that involve the exercise of independent thought and judgment.
At the time that I had a student enrolled in UHS, the institution was not and had not been at any point during its history keeping longitudinal data on its alumni. There was no one connected with UHS or TUSD who could provide comprehensive, systematic data about the matriculation, graduation, or professional success of its graduates. During the time that I attended Parents’ Association and Site Council meetings, there was a LOT of attention paid to USNWR rankings and much celebration every time they went up. There were policy changes made by the Site Council that were distinctly aligned with keeping up with Basis in the USNWR rankings, including ensuring that seniors registered for a full course load which, given the course offerings available, would include many AP courses. There were attempts to use undesignated tax credit funds that were originally intended to support extracurriculars and fine arts to pay for AP exam fees for families that did not qualify for free and reduced lunch (no doubt the move in this direction was intended to increase the number of students taking the AP exams that affect the rankings). There was absolutely no systematic communication with alumni or the colleges they attended which could support meaningful reflection taking place on whether an AP-intensive curriculum actually enabled students to succeed in college. There are many UHS students who get significant support and guidance from their families that supplement the deficiencies in what the institution provides, and many UHS students who pay private college counselors to help them in ways that UHS is not prepared to do. Many of these students will do very well. But there are also UHS grads who struggle to figure out how to do what top-tier liberal arts colleges are asking them to do in the way of research and writing, UHS grads who leave UHS with no sense of direction about what they want to study in college or do in life and end up interrupting their college enrollment and taking leaves of absence from college to try to figure out, and UHS grads who change their intended professional course because their coursework at UHS has not prepared them for what college level work in that discipline will require of them.
The League of Women Voters observed UHS Site Council for a number of months in 2016 and their observation report is available here:
http://www.lwvgt.org/files/ObsCorps09.2016_Observer_Corps_Report_-_UHS.pdf
Public governing bodies like school site councils are required to follow Arizona’s Open Meeting Law, which requires that records of meetings be publicly accessible. For any one who is interested in basing their opinions about what UHS is and is not on reality rather than speculation, the policy changes made by UHS Site Council and some record of discussions of the rationale behind them can be reviewed by reading minutes on the UHS Site Council website:
2012-2013: http://uhssitecouncil.weebly.com/2012-2013.html
2013-2014: http://uhssitecouncil.weebly.com/2013-2014.html
2014-2015: http://uhssitecouncil.weebly.com/2014-2015.html
2015-2016: http://uhssitecouncil.weebly.com/2015-2016.html
2016-2017: http://uhssitecouncil.weebly.com/2016-2017.html