By DAVID S. OWEN
Bexley News Reporter
Bexley High School was recently
named as one of the nation's best high schools according to the Jay
Matthews Challenge Index which was published nationally in the May
28 issue of Newsweek Magazine.
This is the third year in a row the
high school has made the list, receiving an index score of 1.634
which placed it at 668 out of a total of 1,200 schools nationwide.
The high school's score is determined
by dividing the total number of Advanced Placement, International
Baccalaureate or Cambridge tests given by the number of students in
that year's graduating class.
"It's a nice result of our efforts to
enhance that program and has been a part of our school improvement
plan for four years," Bexley High School Principal John Kellogg
said.
Kellogg said every
year, more and more schools seem to join the program nationwide and
rank in the top 1,000 and the difference of being ranked 668 as
opposed to 700 is very small.
"What I really wish they would do is
lump schools in cohorts," he said.
For example, Kellogg said rather than
the index saying a school is ranked 668, it could look at the top
percentile of schools instead instead because there is a small
difference between a score of 1.634 and a school 50 places ahead.
"For me, it's more about the
opportunity we've created for kids, and the way that has impacted
our school," Kellogg said.
"It's a very simple but elegant way to examine how schools get more
kids to take challenging curriculum," he said.
The index is the creation of
journalist Jay Matthews, a Washington Post staff writer, who
devised it to measure which schools across the country do the best
job of preparing average students for college. The index uses a
participating school's rate of participation in college level tests,
such as AP tests, to indicate which schools were the most demanding
and supportive of all students.
The total number of tests taken each
year are then divided by the number of graduating seniors for that
school.
According to
Matthews, average students are often considered not ready for, or
not deserving of, AP courses even though many studies show they need
the challenge and that success in AP courses can lead to success in
college.
Matthews said
research has shown that just taking the course and the test matters
more than the score, because even struggling AP students learn a
great deal.
Kellogg and his
staff have defined AP expansion as one of the high school's goals.
According to school records, more
than 90 percent of Bexley students go on to college after
graduation, and the efforts of the high school's teaching staff is a
big part of preparing them for the coursework.
Since 2004, the high school has
required students enrolled in an AP course to take the AP exam.
Total enrollment in AP courses at the
high school has continued to increase, with 462 students having
enrolled in AP courses for the 2007-08 school year.
Kellogg said they have added AP
courses in computer science, chemistry, art history, government and
physics in the last couple of years, and will be offering statistics
for the first time beginning this fall. He said 45 students are
signed up for the statistics course.
"When you look at the numbers of kids
we have taking more than one, it's phenomenal," Kellogg said.
"It's no uncommon for us to have a
kid taking three, four, and in some cases even five AP courses in a
year," he said.
"Our student
body, which is a tremendously driven student population, sees the
value in the AP class, the value in the experience and even the
value in taking the tests, which prepares them for future studies,"
he said.