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| Kudos! |
Reacting to the ranking, the schools principal was quoted as saying, "The NJ Monthly ranking justifies all that we have been doing the last two years as a school."
Arthur L. Johnson High School was cited as the top performing high school among all high schools in the District Factor Grouping of “F” schools based on municipal wealth, and in the Top 15 most improved high schools over the past two years, according to NJ Today.net.
Even more impressive is how well ALJ stacked up against its nearby counterparts. Westfield High School came in 49th Place, Cranford 51st (down from 13) and Scotch Plains 60th.
The top three high schools in the state, according to NJ Monthly are: New Providence, McNair Academy (Jersey City) and Tenafly. The bottom three: Linden, T.A Edison Academy (Elizabeth) and Thomas Jefferson Arts Academy (Elizabeth).
ALJ Rankings:
2012: 40th
2010: 101st
2008: 95th
At first blush doesnt this just sound so wonderful! But results and these studies can be a crock of BS. If one thinks about it how could a high school rank jump up 50 places in rankings or even drop 50 places? I dont know what criteria and weightings they used but movement like this only makes the study appear questionable at best and fraudulent at worst. Did Clark replace every teacher with better teachers? Did every student suddenly over the summer increase their IQ 50 points? Did every other high school ahead of Clark in rankings burn down?
ReplyDeleteAny high school normally has only year to year minor nuances and changes in administration, teacher quality, student demographics and to me i find it actually is impossible to jump more than 10 points as a guess even with a new superintendant. They mention 4 year smoothed graduation rates versus 9th grade newbies-- that is probably the only driver of this study's heavy ranking fluctuations and this criteria is really just a year to year basis so it should only play an extremely minor part. After this criterias inclusion any fluctuation should be minor moving forward. Any other explanation for something large would have its plausability doubtful. We'll see in the next 2 and 4 year cycles, the numbers should certainly settle down to minor fluctuations and if clark remains up there then they deserve some credit for the graduation rates which probably and rarely fluctuate much anyway. all IMHO of course.