I went to the 108th best high school in the country!
Mood: bored
Music: Rent - "Rent"
Posted on 2006-05-03 10:31:00
Tags: movies palmtogooglecalendar links
Words: 178

At least, according to Newsweek (here's the full list). Ed Felten points out that their methodology is a little suspect...

Disney is toning down Mission:Space ride - at first I thought they were toning it down for everyone, but they're just providing a toned down version in addition to the original, which is good. I can see why some people have trouble with it, though - the ride is pretty intense. Good stuff!

LJ was slow yesterday because of a DDoS attack. Guh. Although that thread does contain a somewhat entertaining flamewar!

Superman Returns trailer - ooh! (from kottke)

Made some more progress on my Palm datebook to Google Calendar importer - now I can delete entries, as well as add entries that don't repeat. Repeating entries are annoying (that was the block of code I posted, although I later learned that everything after the first three lines will always be the same, since it describes the timezone and daylight savings time), and I don't get any useful error message, so I guess I'll just tweak it some more until it works...

15 comments

Comment from sanjeev87:
2006-05-03T11:37:51+00:00
Haha, I went to #105! In your face!

Comment from gregstoll:
2006-05-03T11:39:22+00:00
No!!!

Ooh, but we have a double star by our name, so there!

Comment from sanjeev87:
2006-05-03T12:02:10+00:00
Yep, we didn't have IB. And we still beat you! :)

Comment from cifarelli:
2006-05-03T12:02:08+00:00
Read the explanation. That helps me stomach Reagan HS in Austin being #232 on that list. I was a bit dumbfounded before that -- they were abysmal back when I was in high school (I guess 10-15 years is enough time to show improvement...but I haven't seen or heard of it being crowed about lately, either).

My high school didn't make the list, which doesn't surprise me in the least. Of course, it's also not the same school now that it was when I went there (they've taken the LAA, which I was part of, out and moved it to LBJ, which did make the list, and quite highly, too).

Comment from wildrice13:
2006-05-03T12:27:41+00:00
My high school was around 500. Now, granted, the quality of my high school has been declining since I went there. But at the same time, I'd like to point out that their methodology screws us too and the guy's counterargument doesn't even mention it. All AP tests taken. Not all AP tests taken by seniors! My high school had some students taking AP tests starting freshman year. One guy in my AP Calculus BC class senior year was a freshman! I'm quite certain he got a 5! I myself took one AP test as a sophomore, two as a junior, and 3 as a senior. Also, at my school students are neither kept from taking the test (if their scores are low) nor forced to take the test. Which means counting our scores would be very accurate. My high school had a 45% E and E rating, which is higher than any of the schools near it in the list.

I was appalled by the number of NJ schools that I know for a fact are not as good as my home high school in general that topped my school on the list. Blech! I read the FAQ on the article and some of what he said made sense. Other parts were bullshit. I recommend to anybody reading this article to also read the FAQ and see if you agree with this guy. If you do, great. If not, you know to take it with multiple grains of salt!

Comment from gregstoll:
2006-05-03T13:04:49+00:00
True indeed. I love numbers, and even I think trying to quantify how good a high school is like this is a bit much...

Comment from quijax:
2006-05-05T15:59:57+00:00
I went to school in Jersey, but it's only ranked 472. I expected better.

Comment from onefishclappin:
2006-05-03T12:57:39+00:00
ha - I went to the cruddiest school of all of you! Number 798 baby!
I'm rather surprised, since it wasn't horrible, though I knew it wasn't the best either...

Comment from cifarelli:
2006-05-03T12:58:27+00:00
Hey, mine wasn't on the list, so I think I get the honors!

Comment from onefishclappin:
2006-05-03T13:41:55+00:00
Maybe so... Actually, looking at the data from just 2 years ago, mine has gotten worse (from 400'something to almost 800), so I think my instinct which was "it wasn't that bad" might have been a lot more true when I was there than now. And yours doesn't count since they split it up. So there :-P

(But I do have an excuse now when I make typos, grammatical mistakes, misspellings - I went to a bad high school. Blame Canada!)

Comment from fairydust1:
2006-05-03T13:54:00+00:00
mine wasn't either, but I wouldn't expect it to be. It was the oldest HS in the state of Indiana, and it showed that at EVERY seam. As sophomores, we were advised that 25% of our class would not make it to graduation, and they were right. My class size droppped from the 700s to the 500s in three years. How sad! So, are we supposed to be honored by NOT making the list and still succeeding? (grin)

Comment from fairydust1:
2006-05-03T13:55:35+00:00
even my hubby's math & science magnet school in MI didn't make the list. Seems the data is a bit skewed towards odd parameters.

Comment from cifarelli:
2006-05-03T14:29:00+00:00
o, are we supposed to be honored by NOT making the list and still succeeding? (grin)

I like that idea! :)

Comment from cifarelli:
2006-05-03T13:20:44+00:00
*shrug* I stopped scanning once I got to the 500s. I thought my school was pretty good but no idea what's happened much in the decade since.

Comment from bobacita:
2006-05-03T15:11:42+00:00
Yeesh, my high school didn't even make it into the top 1200..

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