Thanks for calling attention to it

As it prepares to send the Class of 2007 out into the world, Teaneck High School has a wide range of things to be proud of, from team and individual athletic successes to an impressive array of college acceptances. The school's recent ranking among the top five percent of public high schools in the Unites States by Newsweek magazine, however, should not necessarily be a point of pride. While Teaneck Superintendent of Schools John F. Czeterko told the Suburbanite that officials are "very pleased with [their] recognition by Newsweek" and the "validation" it provides, the Newsweek ranking, when placed in context, is actually a manifestation of what many in Teaneck say is wrong with the schools.

A quick glance at the methodology employed by Newsweek demonstrates how this is so. The magazine ranks schools by the total number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and Cambridge exams taken by the student body each year and divides that number by the number of graduating seniors. There are, of course, many reasons why such a statistic is not a valid way of drawing conclusions about the quality of a school. In Teaneck High's case, the particular fallacy is that while the total number of exams taken in the school may exceed the number of graduating seniors and therefore place the school in elite company, those tests are being taken by a subset of the population of 11th and 12th graders, many of whom sit for multiple examinations across a number of subjects. More than three quarters of the student body takes no Advanced Placement examinations or AP level courses whatsoever. And with an average SAT score that hovers below the mean for New Jersey and a pass rate on proficiency examinations that lags the state averages as well, it is clear that a large proportion of the student body is not doing anything near college-level work. Given this mixed bag of performance indicators (none of which tells the whole story), school rankings such as these are basically worthless. Worse, in this case, by awarding the school such a high ranking on the basis of its ratio of AP exams to graduating seniors, Newsweek is actually highlighting the extreme disparities in achievement among students at Teaneck High School.

To be sure, if there is going to be a wide achievement gap in the Teaneck, it is certainly better that it arise due of the presence of a cohort of fine students taking challenging courses whose experience stands apart from that of a large portion of the student body. Still, given the emphasis placed on remedying the yawning chasm separating the best from the rest during the most recent Board of Education campaign, one would think this kind of publicity would be somewhat unwelcome- for now. Hopefully, we can look forward to a day when rankings such as these will come alongside better overall performance figures and broader participation in Teaneck High's most advanced academic offerings. That's the kind of "validation" Superintendent Czeterko and company should be seeking.