California High School Rankings

The Purpose of California High School Rankings

People who send their children to a public school may wonder why schools need to be ranked at all. One purpose for California high school rankings is to let parents know what the education quality is at their school, and to offer them the opportunity to decide which school to send their child to. Supposedly, offering parents this information will allow them to remove a child from a particular school and re-enroll them in another higher-ranking public school in the same district.

The other purpose is to allow the California Department of Education to evaluate the effectiveness of the curriculum taught in the public schools as well as the quality of the teachers within those schools.

California Accountability Progress Reporting

According to California School Rankings.org, Accountability Progress Reporting consists of three components:

• Academic Performance Index Report (API)
• Adequate Yearly Progress Report (AYP)
• Program Improvement Report (PI)

The goal of the Accountability Progress Reporting is to assess the academic achievement in all of the public schools in California. The California Department of Education prepares and distributes this report each year. The ARP report is available on the CDE's website.

A school's API report score ranges from 200 to 1000 and the number assigned to each school is based on statewide testing. The goal for each school is to maintain an 800 score or higher. A school that has a score below 800 is required to reach specific growth targets until the minimum of 800 is reached. The growth targets are different for each school that falls below the 800 score. Schools that maintain a score of 800 or more are eligible to become a California Distinguished or even a prestigious National Blue Ribbon School.

California Distinguished School Program

According to the California Department of Education, approximately five percent of all of the schools within the state are eligible to receive the Distinguished School Award. Schools that win this award can keep this honor for four years. Winners of the award have to maintain a high API report score, accountability in reference to the No Child Left Behind (AYP) and meet the API requirements for California schools.

National Blue Ribbon Schools

The U.S. Department of Education selects National Blue Ribbon Schools. In order to be eligible for this award, a school must have 40 percent of the school population designated as disadvantaged and demonstrate a dramatic improvement in their state's academic performance system. These schools must rank in the top 10 percent of their state's assessment reports.

Public Response to Rankings

Many parents have a lukewarm response to the California School Rankings because they usually aren't able to do anything about where their child goes to school. Even if parents wanted to send their child to another school, they would have to wait until there was room for their child in that school. Educators are not always in favor of school rankings because they believe it only goes to show how public schools are below average in educating students. A low school ranking could encourage wealthier people to send their children to private schools instead. In this scenario, removing high achieving children from a school with more than its share of disadvantaged children, could make a school's ranking plummet.

Proponents of the school ranking system believe that setting achievement goals for schools will improve the quality of education and challenge students and teacher's to strive for excellence. Detractors of the school ranking system believe that students are no longer learning at a normal pace and enjoying their education. Instead, they are only being taught bits and pieces of a curriculum, or "teaching to the test," so that they will score high on standardized tests. There have also been incidences where teachers have doctored their student's exam scores so that they appeared higher than they actually were.

School rankings can give quantifiable information regarding how well students are doing in tests across the board. Test results show where students and teacher's weaknesses lie, as well as what the strengths are. The results of the tests in California are made public each year so that parents can view the rankings. Parents can then make informed decisions on whether to send their child to a top ranking school or to continue to send them to their local public school, even if it is sub-par.