In what has become an annual rite of spring, Newsweek magazine has again ranked Riverside-Brookfield High School as one of the top high schools in the state. For the second straight year, RB came in third in the state in the Newsweek rankings of high schools. Newsweek’s rankings are based on the percentage of students taking Advanced Placement exams.
RB was the highest-ranked non-selective enrollment high school in Illinois and ranked 139th in the nation, a drop of two spots from last year. Northside College Prep High School was ranked best in the state by Newsweek and Lincoln Park High School finished second.
“I don’t think we should take it for granted,” said RB Superintendent/Principal Jack Baldermann. “I think it is one sign of the extraordinary work our teachers and students do. Just because it keeps happening doesn’t mean it’s not special. We’ve go to celebrate victories and the tremendous accomplishments of our teachers and students.”
Newsweek ranks high schools by one measure, called the challenge index, developed by journalist Jay Matthews. This index is calculated by taking the number of AP, International Baccalaureate and Cambridge tests taken by students at a high school during a specific year and dividing that number by the number of graduating seniors.
The more AP exams that a school’s students take, the higher a school’s challenge index. How well those students do on the exams is not considered.
In 2008, 544 RB students took a total of 1,215 AP exams. Fifty-nine percent of those students scored a 3 or higher on those tests. AP exams are graded on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest score. AP classes are designed to be college-level classes, and a score of at least a 3 is necessary to gain college credit. Whether to award college credit, and what score is needed to obtain college credit, is up to individual colleges and universities.
Baldermann said that although many more students at RB take AP classes than at other schools, RB’s pass rate continues to improve.
“The thing that doesn’t get mentioned is that as we increase our participation rate, our pass rate is also going up,” Baldermann said. “Even though we keep including more students, our pass rate keeps going up. I continue to be proud.”
Some on the District 208 school board want to reexamine RB’s AP policy, which has strongly encouraged students to take those classes.
“AP is an issue that needs to be looked at and reviewed to make sure that we have a good program, but we’re not having kids taking AP just to be taking AP,” said newly elected school board member Matt Sinde. “Our hope is to look at it objectively, to get feedback from the community and to also look at what other schools are doing policy-wise.”
Sinde, Mike Welch and Dan Moon made the district’s emphasis on AP classes one of the issues in their election campaign, and they said that they heard from a many parents who were uncomfortable with RB’s policies on AP. Some have complained that honors class offerings suffered as AP gained importance.
“We really need to step back and make sure that the students taking AP are the students who have the ability and have the skills to take these AP classes to succeed in these AP classes,” Sinde said. “We have to make sure we’re not pushing kids into AP just for the sake of saying they’re taking an AP class.”
Lyons Township High School, which serves the southern half of Brookfield, was ranked 38th in Illinois and 1,318 in the nation by Newsweek. Last year Newsweek ranked LT 29th in Illinois and 1,123 in the country.
For the past two years, LT has scored higher than RB in another magazine’s rankings. Last year U.S. News and World Report awarded LT a silver medal while failing to recognize RB. U.S. News uses a more complicated three-step process to rank schools rather than basing its ranking on the percentage of students taking AP tests.
LT students also took all-time high number of AP tests during the 2007-08 school year. Despite the fact that the school is more than twice the size of RB, LT’s students took fewer total AP tests – 1,117 to RB’s 1,215.
“We are making the curriculum open and accessible to as many students as possible,” said Scott Eggerding LT’s director of curriculum and instruction.
LT’s students on a percentage basis also scored higher on the exams than students at RB.
Some 91 percent of LT students taking AP exams scored a 3 or higher, compared to 59 percent of RB’s AP exam takers.
