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Welcome to Laurie Goodman's blog. I use this space to share news and opinions about education and schools in Ridgewood, the state of New Jersey and the nation, in addition to other issues I'm personally interested in. I invite you to share your thoughts, feelings, questions or opinions, too, by posting comments on any blog entry. Please observe basic courtesy -- keep your comments focused on issues, no personal attacks or bullying, please. Contact me directly at: lauriegood@mac.com

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Ridgewood High School moves up on Newsweek's list.

Updated at 7:25 p.m.
In case you missed it, Newsweek's new rankings of the top 1500 high schools in the country have come out, and Ridgewood's ranking is #498.

See the rankings and read the article by clicking here.

Other New Jersey J District high schools were ranked as follows:
Millburn -- 170
Ridge -- 175
West Morris Mendham -- 474
Cranford -- 568
West Windsor Plainsboro -- 678
Haddonfield -- 713
Chatham -- 735
Mountain Lakes -- 1,074
Rumson Fair-Haven -- 1,111

Ridgewood's ranking in the past few years:

2008...541
2007...576
2006...480
2005...321

As you may know, I'm not a huge fan of magazine rankings in general, but at least the Newsweek article is very clear and up front about how the rankings are calculated: it's all about AP tests and the number of students taking them. The reporter explains quite coherently and persuasively why this is a good measure (click here), albeit just one measure. I strongly urge you to read the methodology (as well as the reasons for this particular measure, and why private schools are not included -- it's because private schools won't share their info with the magazine).

As long as we all don't live and die by a single magazine's ranking, I think it's perfectly fine to at least celebrate our achievement in this one piece of the big picture.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good news indeed!

Congrats to the students, teachers & administrators for making RHS, by any measure, an outstanding high school.

Laurie said...

Confidential to Anonymous @ 3:05 PM today:
The rumor you heard about my “belief” is not true. Quite the contrary. But I don’t feel like posting your aggressive comment so I can spend precious time defending or denying. This is the first time I’ve elected to block a post, and you know that usually I welcome anything, even your criticisms of me. This is just false hearsay, annoying and manipulative. If you'd like to give me something concrete to respond to, fine. Today I don’t feel like dealing with it and I’m too busy to agonize over the dilemma. Tomorrow…who knows?

Laurie said...

Once again, to you-know-who-you-are:

I'm sorry, but I will not publish comments that are personally derogatory. And I cannot comment on individual staff performance (that is illegal for me as a Board member and not a good idea anyway).

Anonymous said...

Sounds like Laurie has had to field more nasty comments from the nattering nabobs of negativism.

It's amazing how some people can take good news -- like this Newsweek survey -- and use it as a platform for comments that are "personally derogatory".

Anonymous said...

Laurie, I see the Cottage Place flacks (1:28pm) are on your blog too.

Whether you don't post my comments is really not the issue. It was meant to give you information. Thought you might want to know what others are keenly aware of as it pertains to district personnel and what is said by whom.

"Only two people can keep a secret and that is if one of them is dead."

Laurie said...

Got it. Thanks for the info. Info is neither good nor bad. It is what it is. I'd just like to keep personally slanderous speculations off my page.

Have a good one.