US News And World Report Closes Cheating Loophole — Charters Tank
U.S. News & World Report produces several influential annual ‘best of’ lists in all kinds of categories. In education they rank colleges, graduate schools, and, of course, high schools.
In recent years, charter schools have been dominating the U.S. News high school rankings. Reform propaganda outlets, like The74, gleefully touted the success of charter schools in the U.S. News & World Report rankings in columns like this and this.
Two years ago I wrote about how the KIPP New York City high school was ranked as the 4th best high school in New York State and then I uncovered that they actually cheated on this by assigning their students to four different schools, one of which became a top performing school. Based on my research, KIPP was eventually disqualified off the list.
While KIPP’s cheating scheme was truly dishonest, other charter schools gamed the ranking system another way. Before this year, the ranking was based primarily on the percent of seniors to pass an AP exam. So if you were a charter school with high attrition and had 25 seniors in your graduating class, despite the fact that you had 150 ninth graders three years earlier, if all 25 of those seniors passed at least one AP test, you could be one of top rated schools in the country.
But this year — finally — U.S. News & World Report closed this loophole for their 2019 results.
Now the rankings are based on (from U.S. News website):
30% College Readiness, which is the percent of 12th graders taking and passing an AP CONTINUE READING: US News And World Report Closes Cheating Loophole — Charters Tank | Gary Rubinstein's Blog