Newsweek high school rankings: invalid money-makers
Published June 11, 2009 @ 02:43PM PT
Newsweek Magazine has once again compromised both credibility and ethics by releasing its annual high school rankings feature. The "rankings" are based on one single measure - one that is invalid as a gauge of quality and simply does not measure how "good" a high school is. They also violate journalistic ethics, as the gauge is one that directly promotes increased profits for an enterprise run by Newsweek's parent company.
The rankings are based entirely on the single criterion of how many AP (or two other similar) tests are taken by the students in the school. That's it. How the students perform on the tests is not part of the equation.
Newsweek's description: "Public schools are ranked according to a ratio devised by [reporter/editor] Jay Mathews: the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate (IB) and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in 2008 divided by the number of graduating seniors."
This is so clearly not a valid gauge of a school's quality that it's hardly worth wasting words explaining. The criterion is also subject to easy manipulation, needless to say.
Here's why this feature compromises Newsweek's ethics. Newsweek's parent company, the Washington Post, also owns Kaplan, the test prep powerhouse. It's also hardly necessary to explain that encouraging more students to take AP tests directly correlates with increasing Kaplan's business.
Standard journalistic ethics call for avoiding the appearance of conflict of interest. The Newsweek high school rankings emblazon the appearance of conflict of interest across the heavens.
An increasing chorus of dissenters complains each year about this feature - including some of the "winners." In May 2008, the superintendents of 38 high-performing school districts signed a letter to Newsweek protesting the feature and requesting that their districts be excluded (a toothless request, but a meaningful gesture). This year, a top education reporter in Dallas - the location of two of the top-ranked schools - questioned the rankings' credibility.
It's not just time-wasting but also harmful to pass authoritative-looking judgments on schools based on invalid criteria. Meanwhile, with the very survival of the news media under threat, journalistic credibility is one asset the media should struggle to keep. Newsweek is making a big mistake to compromise its ethics so shamelessly. The magazine needs to eliminate and renounce this corrupt and damaging feature.
Share this Post
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
StumbleUpon
Delicious
EmailRelated Posts
-
A Foundation of Bubbles: Deconstructing the McKinsey Report, Part 1
-
What Thomas Friedman Doesn't Say
-
Pharmer's Market: The Cost of Producing "Successful" Students
Comments (7)
Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the ideas covered in the posts. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; that contain ad hominem attacks; or that are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion.
Author
Featured Education Actions
-
-
-
Eliminate Violence Against Women
1739 People
-
Eliminate Violence Against Women
Here's the thing about Jay Matthews. He's a decent reporter but if you follow his coverage in the Post it seems that he rarely would stoop to acknowledge that bad high schools exist in the Washington, D.C. area. He has an obvious coverage bias to certain high schools in Fairfax and Montgomery counties (Montgomery Blair HS, for once, whose online newspaper is basically funded by WaPo). So it's hard to take this seriously.
Posted by Tom Panarese on 06/11/2009 @ 06:02PM PT
You must be signed in to report content.
This has been a huge problem for schools. The one that is done on colleges and universities is also problematic and schools have been starting to take themselves out of consideration for the "honor" of being on that list because it is creating the strong temptation to structure the school for the purpose of being on the list, which corrupts - kinda like standardized testing does to grade schools! It makes that old book "De-Schooling Society" seem like a a radical idea that will make more sense as we continue down this crazy path. When will stop the compulsion to rank and grade and assign value to every person and institution?
Posted by Tracy Stevens on 06/12/2009 @ 07:27AM PT
You must be signed in to report content.
I agree that the very concept is problematic. Having just gone through the college search, I've followed a lot of the criticism of the U.S. News college rankings, including some high-profile pushback.
This particular high school ranking is an even more extreme case, though, because of the bizarre outlier single criterion involved and Newsweek's pretty outrageous financial conflict of interest.
Posted by Caroline Grannan on 06/12/2009 @ 07:50AM PT
You must be signed in to report content.
Wouldn't it be great if they were ranked (if we must rank) schools on some other more valid criteria? Like portfolios, projects, enrichment programs, field-trips, interviews, success of past graduates.... There are so many better indicators of quality schools than AP courses.
I appreciate the effort to call them out on that conflict of interest and the ridiculous criteria they are using. If more people do it and express outrage it will help stop the practice and the harm that comes from it.
Posted by Tracy Stevens on 06/12/2009 @ 08:10AM PT
You must be signed in to report content.
Actually, I disagree with Ms. Grannan. The Newsweek list is a specific marketing technique of Kaplan, who seems to have overwhelmed the editorial independence of both newspaper owner and magazine. Given how much money is now in play with No Child Left Behind renewal/revision, this is neither surprising nor in the least bit confusing, other than the inevitable confusion - endemic in all DC media - between marketing and news.
One measure of that value, incidentally, is the sale, last year, of one of the NCLB contracting firms for $2.4 billion - all for a tutoring company whose average staff member makes less than $12/hour, while they bill schools at over $30. In that context, it's not at all surprising that Kaplan has overtaken other parts of the Post and Newsweek in dictating what they print.
Many, many years ago I worked with Time in their research department. We used to gloat that, unlike the NYTimes, Time and Newsweek abide by the rule "all the news that fits, we print." It's gotten simpler. Now it's "all the cash we we carry."
Posted by Joe Beckmann on 06/12/2009 @ 08:11AM PT
You must be signed in to report content.
Reading about this issue gave me a small dose of déjà vu.
Thirty five years ago I worked on secondment to a university medical research department in the UK.
The sole measure of performance for any researcher was the number of papers published in journals each year. The substance and quality of the papers didn't matter - just the number.
Needless to say the vast majority of papers were of low value, contributing little to the pool of knowledge.
Perhaps Newsweek is attempting to prepare students for such an environment? To the best of my knowledge the same measure is still in operation in the university today...
Posted by Peter Brooks on 06/13/2009 @ 03:25PM PT
You must be signed in to report content.
And Peter's recall reminds me of a story of that same vintage. I went to Columbia (NY) and the year before me an admissions director went crazy and used ONLY SAT scores as the admissions criterion. That class had the highest rates of crazy, suicidal, and acting out, and that admissions director was sacked and went on to a job... at ETS, making more tests.
Posted by Joe Beckmann on 06/13/2009 @ 03:38PM PT
You must be signed in to report content.