Each year, U.S. News and World Report releases a statewide and nationwide list of the best high schools in the country based on academic achievement.
Denise Dubravec, New Trier Principal, disregards this ranking system.
She said, “We believe that the magazine rankings do not at all reflect reality when it comes to how a high school is serving its students.”
Principal Dubravec notes that many top schools across the country, which are similar to New Trier, chose not to submit information to these magazines.
However, with publicly available data, some magazines create rankings regardless. Others exclude New Trier from their lists completely.
Dubravec believes that among the numerous problems with the ranking system, one outlying issue is the, “Heavy reliance, or in the case of the Washington Post, their sole reliance on ranking schools based on how many students at a school take AP tests.”
In these rankings, the AP scores don’t matter as much as the total number of students who simply take the test.
This ranking system benefits schools that allow all students, regardless of age or school to take APs (New Trier only allows upperclassmen to participate in Advanced Placement courses). Because of this flawed method for ranking schools, New Trier has chosen to disregard the rankings.
Post High School counselor, Deborah Donley, thinks it’s alarming that some schools allow incoming freshman to take AP courses.
She said, “Can you imagine taking an AP course as a freshman? High school is a hard enough transition.”
Dubravec stresses that confining AP courses to upperclassmen is not a disadvantage for students.
She said, “We believe in offering a rigorous curriculum at an appropriate level for all students, and we provide AP courses as an additional option for upperclassmen.”
In this way, New Trier helps students both adequately challenge and develop essential learning skills.
“Freshmen and sophomores are in appropriately sequenced but challenging courses in which the focus is on the best curricular materials and instructional methods for each individual student; we do not assume that Advanced Placement equals ‘better,” said Dubravec.
Donley believes that colleges generally disregard the rankings system, knowing just as well as New Trier that they are an inadequate source of information.
She said, “I don’t think colleges care or know. College admissions are too busy; they don’t read the rankings and say, “Oh, he’s from this school, let’s take him.”
Dubravec adds that despite New Trier’s “poor” U.S. News rankings , it’s unfair to think New Trier is anything but a first class high school.
“New Trier absolutely is a top tier high school in the state and nation by any logical measure.
College admissions officials regularly convey to our post-high school counselors the high regard in which New Trier is held across the country, and the reputation for success that New Trier students have once they enter college.”
New Trier displays this every year with its consistently dominant ACT test scores.
Dubravec also adds, “For the Class of 2014, New Trier’s average composite ACT score was 27.4 (compared to a state average of 20.7).
That score is the highest for any open enrollment high school in the state and has been for many years running.”
New Trier’s rankings have been decreasing at the same time that its average ACT score has been increasing.
This is a puzzling statistic for an equally puzzling ranking system that fails to take into account crucial pieces of data, like ACT scores.
Despite tremendous efforts made by the administration to maintain New Trier’s high academic excellence, Dubravec attributes it to two things: the excellence of its teachers and its students.