[NOISE] Re: Public Schools

[Jim McCoy <mccoy@communities.com>]

Lsurfer@cris.com (Randy Bradakis) wrote:
>The human formerly known as "ronsimpson <ronsimpson@unidial.com>" wrote:
>{I hate to burst any bubbles but, the school with the highest number of
>{National Merit Finalists and highest number of 1600 SATs is a Public
>{High School (Jefferson High in Fairfax, VA)
>
>Er, how about the schools with the highest percentages, not the largest
>number?  A public school will most certainly have more students than
>home schools or private schools.

Well, even then you are probably going to have a tough time making your
argument.  Public "magnet" schools and other public schools which target
the top flight students in major metropolitan areas will usually have a
very high percentage of such students because they are able to "cherry pick"
the ones they want (and avoid dragging down averages with students whose
parents have "pull" that some private schools must deal with.)  If you take
the percentages for a school district or other large geographic area which
covers several schools you will probably end up with a better comparison.

Then again, even with such a geographic comparison you may not end up with
the results you seem to want.  In certain areas of the US the public schools
are excellent (generally the Midwest judging from published surveys of test
results and other somewhat meaningless tests :) and in some ares the public
schools are horrific.  Making broad claims regarding which types of
education are good and which are bad is often a fools errand....

jim