Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary Recognized

The following is a copy of the Special Report that identified Quigley as one of the top high schools in the country.  This appeared in the Jan. 18, 1999 issue of The US News and World Report

US NEWS & WORLD REPORT

SPECIAL REPORT

Great schools in every region push all their students toward high academic achievement. Detroit, Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, New York. In these metro areas, U.S. News reviewed 1,053 schools and singled out examples that can serve as models of excellence for communities across the nation.

BY THOMAS TOCH

Scrutiny of the nation's high schools has never been greater. Thirty-six states now publish annual report cards on individual schools, according to the newspaper Education Week. The National Conference of State Legislators expects school quality to top state legislative agendas in 1999. And President Clinton last week announced a $400 million plan to spur higher school standards. And why not? In poll after poll voters say that school reform is their biggest concern. If the past decade has been the Age of Lament for America's schools, the nation is now entering the Age of Accountability.

Three big trends are driving the accountability movement: rising educational requirements for good jobs, the public's frustration with the performance of many public schools, and the spread of school choice, which is giving a growing number of families the option of picking the schools their children attend.

A generation or two ago, a solid high school education wasn't really necessary for many students; the assembly line offered middle-class wages to workers with low-level skills. Today, the earnings premium on education is dramatic and the continuum is clear: A good high school education begets a good college education. The Census Bureau reports that in 1997, median earnings for full-time, year-round male workers with a high school diploma were 21 percent higher than for men with only some high school education. For women, high school diplomas yielded 34 percent higher earnings. The wage gap between high school and college is even greater. The median earnings of men with a bachelor's degree were 51 percent higher than for those with a high school diploma, while women with a bachelor's degree earned 57 percent more than those with a high school diploma.

These wage disparities have helped spur widespread demands for better schools and have led policymakers to increase competition among schools to encourage reform. There are now an estimated 5,000 "magnet" schools and "charter" schools. That is twice as many magnets as existed a decade ago; no charters existed then. Some 24 states educating about 7.4 million high school students now allow students to cross school system boundaries to attend classes–tuition free.

Unfortunately, on close inspection, many of the new report cards are not very helpful in determining how well schools are performing. With exceptions such as reports issued by the Texas Education Agency and the Seattle Times, a regional newspaper, these assessments fail in a fundamental way: They neglect to take into consideration the fact that students' family circumstances strongly influence their levels of achievement. Simply put, the more privileged students' backgrounds are, the higher their scores are likely to be–regardless of the schools they attend. As a result, the evaluation of schools in many report cards largely reflects the socioeconomic circumstances of their students, rather than the performance of the schools themselves.

U.S. News spent the past two years creating a more reliable method of evaluating schools. Working with the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, one of the nation's most highly regarded educational research organizations, we developed what we believe is the most sophisticated means yet devised of assessing schools' performance. With NORC, U.S. News surveyed 1,053 high schools in six major metro areas–Detroit, Boston, Chicago, Dallas–Fort Worth, Atlanta, and New York. We cite 96 schools as examples of outstanding institutions–that is, schools where students progress steadily toward high academic standards and where every student matters.

To be identified as outstanding, a school had to show high academic achievement after adjusting for family circumstances. This is a "value-added" approach. We designed a statistical model that examined schools' effects on a range of measures, and outstanding schools had to show excellence across the board. We wanted to cite exemplars and to discover the policies and practices they employ so that parents and everyone else with a stake in school quality can learn how great schools do their job.

The research reveals that outstanding schools share several key traits, including:

High academic standards that encourage all students to take courses that put them on track to succeed. The best schools have standards that will help graduates perform in the real world and not simply score well on performance tests. For example, that could mean that a school requires students to take at least three years of a foreign language to prepare to function in a global economy.

A core curriculum that prepares graduates for the demands of college. If three years of math are required, students should progress beyond the basics to advanced courses such as algebra II, trigonometry, and calculus.

Highly qualified teachers who have a thorough knowledge of the subject they teach and a willingness to match their teaching styles to the needs of their students. Good teachers let their students know they care deeply about whether the kids succeed.

Strong mentoring for new teachers that gives them a sense of support from school authorities and prevents burnout.

Partnerships between parents and schools that enhance the academic offerings of the school.

Administrators and teachers who know each child, make each feel a part of the larger school community, and won't let students fall through the cracks and fail. Good schools offer student mentoring programs that give kids regular chances to meet with teachers outside the formal classroom.

High attendance rates that reflect a school's ability to excite students about learning. The schools have policies that reward high attendance and penalize absenteeism. They also make parents partners in the process.

The outstanding schools we found are strikingly diverse–economically, racially, and geographically. Our statistical model measured schools against themselves (that is, how well schools are doing with the kids they have), and we found a number of exceptional schools that hadn't been widely recognized for their superior work in the past. Also among our exemplary schools are a number of single-sex schools and schools (both public and parochial) with a strong spiritual bent. This likely reflects the advantages schools have when there is a strong sense of community among students.

The survey. Virtually every secondary school in the six metro areas was eligible for our study (a few were too small or lacked a 12th grade). However, some schools declined to participate at the start of the project, and an additional 17 percent failed to return a questionnaire seeking important information. There are surely outstanding schools among this group, but U.S. News could not highlight them for lack of data.

There may also be schools with strong regional reputations that aren't among the examples of excellent schools that we've identified. The reason is simple: We use several different measures of school performance, and schools must do better than expected, given their students' family circumstances, on all of the measures. A school with high test scores would not be considered outstanding unless it performed above the expected level. Of course, many of the outstanding schools have both attributes: better-than-expected student performance and high absolute levels of performance.

Some of the outstanding examples are magnet schools that use selective admissions standards. Do these schools have an advantage over neighborhood public schools that must educate every student within their jurisdiction? The best way to address this question would be to test students at the beginning and end of high school and measure students' test score gains, thus eliminating any advantage for magnets. But entrance tests aren't widely given in public high schools. U.S. News identified and analyzed the schools with selective admissions participating in its study and found, somewhat surprisingly, that selective admissions didn't have much influence on which schools met our criteria for being outstanding.

Though we believe this is among the most comprehensive and fairest studies of school performance that has ever been done, there are, nonetheless, limitations to statistical portraits of schools. Statistics can't easily grasp the culture of schools, much less whether one atmosphere or another is right for a particular student. That is why in our "parent's guide" we encourage families to tour schools and suggest the best ways to explore a school's performance, its values, and its priorities.

One disappointment we had during the course of working on this project is that many independent schools–private schools that aren't in Catholic parochial systems–declined to participate. We did get a substantial response from independent schools in the Chicago area, and we focused a story on the admirable leadership of Principal Shoshanah Bechhofer of the Hanna Sacks Bais Yaakov High School.

Policy debates. The extensive data U.S. News and NORC gathered–more than 120 different pieces of information about each school–offers insights into several major debates in education today. The analysis suggests, for example, that school size isn't necessarily an important factor in student achievement. Smaller schools, it seems, can be quite effective in exploiting an intimate environment. Conversely, large schools can often use their greater resources to offer a wider range of advanced courses. On another issue, the presence of computers in schools does not in itself guarantee good academic results. Other research argues that what matters is how computers are used in classrooms.

U.S. News discovered that there are many different types of truly outstanding high schools. Anyone with a stake in improving education would benefit from looking closely at the characteristics of these exemplars. They point the way to reforms that really work to produce great schools.

See U.S. News on Good Morning America the week of January 11 for a five-part series on "What Makes a Great School." And check out www.usnews.com for the ABC/U.S. News opinion poll on American high schools.

U.S. NEWS METHODOLOGY