District Officials 'Surprised' South Not Ranked by Magazine

Council Rock School District officials say the process by which U.S. News and World Reports used to assess high schools left Council Rock High School South out of a list that ranked the district’s other high school 13th in the state.

Superintendent Mark Klein, in a email sent via the district’s list serve, said the administration was “surprised” South was not ranked by the publication.

“Historically, our high schools rank in close proximity to one another when assessed in these comparative studies,” he said.

According to U.S. News & World Report's assessment, which was published in April, Council Rock North is the highest ranked high school in Bucks County. South wasn't included on the list of the top 40 high schools in the state.

However, administrators believe it was the method by which the schools were ranked, not actual performance or quality of education, that was the differentiating factor.

“We spent time with this publication trying to understand the criteria for the disparity in ranking, when the caliber of staff and students and curricular requirements are virtually identical,” the email said.

“Upon examination, we learned that CR South fell just short of being ranked in a multifaceted process used by US News and World Reports.  The first screening for high schools uses a complex formula to link economically disadvantaged students to an overall academic performance.  On the chart that showed this performance, CR South was just under the criteria to move forward.”

U.S. News joined forces with the American Institutes for Research, a D.C.-based organization, to evaluate schools on overall student performance on state-mandated assessments, as well as how effectively schools educated their black, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students.

According to the email from Klein, only 27 percent of the nation’s high schools are eligible for ranking by the US News and World Reports criteria and only 11 percent go one to receive a formal ranking.  “In Pennsylvania, only 69 high schools among the 687 high schools in the Commonwealth received a ranking,” he noted. 

Klein pointed to rankings by other publications as evidence that both schools offer high quality education. “In the spring of 2012, both high schools were ranked nationally in Newsweek Magazine. In that ranking, CR North was 17^th in Pennsylvania and 529 in the nation. CR South was 19^th in the state and 594 in the nation,” he said.

“Both of our high schools continue to do extremely well on a variety of important metrics including graduation rate, college admission and academic performance. Our community is known, in large part, by the strength of our schools and you can continue to be proud of the accomplishments of all of our schools,” the email said.