Why did South Side slide off best schools list?

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After years of consistently being named one of the best high schools in the country, South Side High School was not on Newsweek’s most recent list of those schools.

The demotion came as a surprise to many, since SSHS has routinely been named one of the best schools on a variety of lists that are released throughout the year.

“At this point, [Principal] John Murphy and I still can’t figure it out,” said Superintendent Dr. William Johnson. “I’ve checked with other districts that are on [the list], and they don’t know why they’re on. And I checked with districts that were off last year and on this year, and they don’t know why that happened.”

According to Newsweek, it used two main criteria to create its 2015 list. First, armed with data from the National Center for Education Statistics, it evaluated schools based on student proficiency rates on standardized, state-level math and English Language Arts tests.

Second, it surveyed high schools’ student college readiness, based on college enrollment rates, graduation rates, an Advanced Placement/International Baccalaureate test composite score, an SAT/ACT composite score, student retention and schools’ student-to-counselor ratio.

The magazine also determined which schools had economically disadvantaged students performing at or above the state average in standardized tests, and created an “equity analysis.”

Part of the reason that SSHS wasn’t on the list this year, Johnson believes, is the weight given to test scores. The AP/IB and SAT/ACT composite scores made up 35 percent of a school’s college-readiness ranking. Many of the top-ranking schools, he said, are private schools that can choose their students.

Johnson said that South Side hasn’t changed what it has done over the years. Rather, the change in the school’s ranking is the result of changing criteria for the list.

“If you take a look at the new lists as they’re coming out, the majority of the highest-ranked schools are ones that are very selective,” he said. “Consequently, the plain vanilla high schools, such as those on Long Island, get pushed further and further down the list.”

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