Schools

Why Paly and Gunn Didn't Make the U.S. News Ranking

Despite their prestige as top schools in the state and nation, Palo Alto's high schools don't do enough to help their disadvantaged students make the grade.

Palo Altans can be described by one word: educated.

With Stanford University and two top-performing high schools, the city has a lot of smart people, which is why the most recent U.S. News and World Report ranking of high schools nationwide was puzzling—Palo Alto and Gunn High were unranked.

So Palo Alto Patch reached out to the publication and received a reply from Bob Morse, director of data research, at U.S. News and World Report.

Find out what's happening in Palo Altowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

His reply? "The reason why Palo Alto and Gunn High Schools didn't make the ranking is that both didn’t pass step 2 of the rankings. Read PDF starting Page 10."

On page 10 of the methodology, it explains that in Step 2 the process sought to identify high schools that had "combined reading and mathematics proficiency levels that were at least equal to the state’s combined reading and mathematics proficiency levels for those disadvantaged student groups."

Find out what's happening in Palo Altowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The goal of this step was to ensure that all students received the same education at the high school, "regardless of their socioeconomic or ethnic backgrounds," the report said.

Morse explained that if one looked at the test scores for Paly and Gunn one would see that there is a gap—in the negative—between the state average score and the school's score.

"This negative means those two school's disadvantaged students didn’t perform as well as the state’s average," he said.

What do you think of this Palo Alto? Do the rankings matter to you? Should it matter that disadvantaged students aren't performing well in the school district? Tell us in comments.


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