My high school published stats in the 70’s, and soon dropped the publication because their stats were going downhill. Hell, they let me graduate….

Jeff

Philips Exeter doesn’t publish stats, therefore, it doesn’t get into rankings. Actually, I’m not sure any private schools do.

Jeff

Well, if you think of “marketing game” as including one of the four Ps, “product,” then I would make the argument that all US News has done with its college issue is to find a crying need for information and then fill that need with the best product (rankings) currently available. But marketing also includes brand leveraging (as you know better than I), and one good product can be used as credibility to sell a number of bad products.

And I think this is what’s going on with the high school ranking issue.

Honestly, I’m pretty sure that if I had the time and inclination I could pull together a rip-roaring indictment of its college rankings, too, but the HS methodology is simply horrific.

But what does its marketing group care, really?

Yes, we’ll have to disagree. I plan to publish a defense of US News’ undergrad rankings when they next come out (next April, I believe, but I could be off a few months). But, just as an appetizer, let me put forth one factor the publication uses in its undergrad rankings: quality of undergraduate class as measured by standardized test scores and rank in class.

Now, I’ve had many, many conversations with your colleagues who have actually taught at schools where the entering class was no better than average on those two measures. They tell me that they had to dumb down the curriculum to match the students’ abilities, and that As are given out on an implied curve (that is, the best of an average bunch gets an A regardless of the level of perfection of the wor). I have also had conversations with faculty at elite schools who tell me that no dumbing down is necessary in their classes.

So, wouldn’t the quality of the student body be a reasonable proxy datum for at least one dimension of quality of education? I mean, all other things being equal, wouldn’t it follow that faculty at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton can present material at a level that faculty at, say, North Southwestern Clayton County State College can’t?

After all, the schools recognized as great are the usual suspects – Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, et. al. – and everyone else is just looking to get into a category where their marketing depts. (which exist by siphoning off funds from actual educational pursuits) can use the info to “sell” education like it was freakin’ fast food. I’m reminded of my late brother-in-law who was always getting me to play in golf tournaments. I was a 6 handicapper; he was a 26. Yet the way “flights” (i.e., categories of golfers) were put together for competitive purposes, he invariably won trophies and I was an also ran competing against scratch golfers.

What this will do is take that model – which now dominates college education – and apply it at the high school level – and so kids at “Rural High” will get cheated even more than they’re being cheated now so that the district superintendent’s office can hire marketers to “sell” high schools the same way colleges get sold. And we move another step closer to privatizing education instead of making the civic commitment to creating a well educated citizenry.

You know, as I think about that, that notion of civic commitment to an educated citizenry sounds like it ought to be part of the Bill of Rights. The new 10A Amendment, as it were….

“No one likes a popularity contest, but everyone likes encouragement. No one believes that the US News and other polls are scientific or reliable, unless they have us in the top ten.”

i.e., we hate it, but we have to play along or we look bad.