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Subscribe to RSSA Nevada principal has a lesson for U.S. News and World Report, which ranked his high school 13th best in the nation: It’s wrong.
Principal Jeff Horn says the magazine used incorrect data to place Green Valley High School of Henderson, Nev., just outside Las Vegas, above nearly 22,000 other public schools, elite prep and technical academies nationwide. The publication released its "Best High Schools" rankings on Tuesday.
"This is a great school and there are a lot of amazing things happening around here,” Horn told msnbc.com on Tuesday. "But the information it was based on is incorrect."
According to the Las Vegas Sun, the rankings published online showed Green Valley with 477 students and 111 teachers, a 4 to 1 ratio. Horn said Green Valley has 2,850 students and a student-teacher ratio closer to 24 to 1. The school also has a 64 percent pass rate on the Advanced Placement exams, not 100 percent as reported in the rankings, Horn said.
“My son first pulled up the report online and was reading it when he said, ‘Did you know you had 477 students?’" Horn said, adding “That's when I started reading it and saw the inaccuracies. Not only were there inaccuracies, but other things were skewed as well.”
Robert Morse, director of data research with U.S. News and World Report, told The Associated Press that the publication was aware of the discrepancy.
"We're looking into it," he told the AP.
According to the AP, Morse said the publication gathers enrollment numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics' Common Core of Data database. The federal statistics center, run through the U.S. Department of Education, collects and analyzes school data from state and local officials, the AP reported.
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Officials with the Education Department didn't immediately return messages seeking comment from msnbc.com.
It's unclear where along the process mistakes were made. Horn said he wasn’t aware of any school official providing data to the publication, and he said he told the local newspaper that he also noticed what appeared to be skewed enrollment figures for other high schools in southern Nevada.
The Las Vegas Sun reported that U.S. News was correct in reporting 17 school districts in Nevada, but made an error when it reported 5,864 full-time teachers and 123,697 students. The Clark County School District has nearly 18,000 teachers and more than 308,000 students, the Las Vegas Sun reported.
Said Horn: “We’ve been getting calls from our local news stations congratulating us and I have had to correct them."
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Gee, what a surprise. Some articles just make up the facts.
Roger, they didn't "make things up". (Although I concede your point, many articles DO.)
Lost in the slant is the fact that they relied on data from the Department of Education.
The fact that the DOE database is so out of whack is what should be alarming to us.
Oh let's report this because, MSNBC NEVER makes grammatical errors. Right?
At least they did the right thing and set the record straight.
Sheeeesh,
Yep, the DOE is going to blame their computer system, State or Local officials, or a hacker for the erroneous data. Certainly no one at the DOE is going to accept blame for this issue....after all.....they know what they are doing. LOLOLOL.
I have an idea.....throw more money into the system quick....that will fix the dad gum problem.
Seems like this administration is falling apart at the seams. Must be a lack of leadership.
That's right Ido, EVERYTHING is President Obama's fault, including your idiocy.
Bush's solution? All Children Left Behind. That worked out really well, right? Wrong!
Shouldn't US News doing some fact checking if they are going to publish rankings based upon the data?
Makes me suspect that their college rankings have errors also.
@Wakehead, you are sooo right!! Nevada has one of the HIGHEST dropout rates in the country. US News couldn't be bothered with checking their facts before publishing.
What has the DOE have to do with reporting on how many students pass the Placement Exams??? The DOE does not administer or grade these exams. They just get the facts from the School. Someone, probably the agency that is reporting the statistics, is lieing about something. Maybe they just want the State to look good. With such a high rate of achievement, i would think you would see about 85% and above of the student population going to Ivy league schools and building fabulous careers. Not likely. Crime is up in that area and the welfare rate is about 6%.
So, this calls into suspect all of the other schools that they reported on as well. What a load of BS!!!!
you answered your own question.
This guy did the right thing because he knows the media will flame him if he doesn't. That is a good thing. On the other hand, how can the numbers used by US News News be so out of whack?
They didn't verify their stats.
So, how much faith should any high school student (and their parents) put into USN&WR's ranking of colleges?
Any answer other than "zilch," "zero" or "none" will be marked as incorrect.
Their rank in math is actually not as bad as it seems. They calculated their scores wrong.
Most educators, meaning classroom teacher and building administrators, will tell you that the DOE at both the state and federal level do more harm than good. The US DOE has pushed so much garbage onto state and local officials that they are drowning in pointless paperwork. NCLB was a failure and Obama's Race to the Top is just as bad. Both called out bad teachers without having a clear system for identifying them. The performance based pay in RTT is a joke. Imagine if a cardiologist was paid based on his patients recovery. However, instead of following doctors orders, the patient eats fast food every night and smokes two packs a day. Did the doctor fail the patient or did the patient fail himself?
Good analogy! We need to pay Politicans the same way they want to pay teachers. In Nevada, 70% of the budget goes to Administration and 30% goes to the Teachers, classrooms and children. Now, nobody needs to wonder why Nevada gets a big F- on the national scale every year, 40+ years now. I think during Guinn's term we made it to a D- but he was motivated to help the teachers and kids and bypass administrators who drain education funds for everything but the children. Clark County school district is a HUGE violator of the HB-1 Visa program, hiring teachers from Asia and firing US teachers during the 2008-2009 school year. When they sent out a request on what parents felt was a big problem, I said that CCSD had broken federal law and they needed to be prosecuted because they stole a whole year or more from thousands of students being forced to sit in classrooms with teachers who did not have command of the English language. On the other side of the coin, they promised these Visa holders citizenship for working at reduced wages without benefits. They eventually got canned and are now 'stuck' between two countries. So, you have a school district running a shell game, flim flamming the public and their teachers and these are the people in charge of the Checking Account. No hope for Nevada children, right Gov Sandy?
If they are relying on data from the Dept of Education, they will be printing the wrong info. From the time it is collected, inputted, and report there are 3 chances for the information to get messed up.
I'm betting there is at least 30% data that is wrongly inputted, or outdated
That is the government at work. Nothing new.
U.S. News and World Report = Worthless.
Their "college rankings" are also worthless as well.
They regularly report obscure schools as being "best in the nation" when they clearly aren't.
For example, they regularly rank Franklin Pierce law center as the best law school for Intellectual Property law. But people who actually practice in the field would have to disagree. In fact, they rate this little-heard of "university" in the backwoods of New Hampshire as the #125 school in the COUNTRY.
The basic premise - that you can "rate" a school based on numbers alone, is flawed. There is more to an education that student/teacher ratios, class sizes, and tuition costs. WHO is teaching and WHAT they are teaching are far more important.
If you get all your info from U.S. News & World Report, you are massively uninformed.
Is anyone really surprised that the Dept of Education had its hand in this?
Please, take the Dept of Educ, zero out its budget, and use 100% the taxes we pay to support this monstrosity to pay off the national debt.
Not a single child or adult in America is smarter because of this mis-named behemoth, and our tax dollars are being demonstrably wasted on yet another Cabinet-level agency.
How much does the DOE cost us as compared to say the well heeled senior class with their Socialist Security and near free viagra?
what another HOAX! story? just how much BS must we take for granted? U. S. Govt. says keep them in fear and we will have complete control, and that is NO HOAX!
No government agency left behind........ This is as bad as Education First, Barbara Bush's moronic education materials corporation that.... surprise..... was launched as the OFFICIAL resource for Every Child Left behind requirements. What a mess. I wasn't surprised, with an overall state graduation rate under 50%, I couldn't see how even Green Valley High, located in the most economically depressed state in the nation, could pull in those numbers. Booster dollars are way, way down and that shows in the real statistics, year over year since 2008, for Green Valley. Too sad. Of course Gov Sandy appointed himself head (last word) of Nevada School Districts, absolutely no qualifications, it's only gotten worse, but he be da judge!
Anything the government is involved in is either crooked, in a mess, or morons running it. They can't do anything right, everything they touch turns to poop. Hate it for the school.
I hope they don't rescind my kid's acceptance to MIT based on the new data.
Yeah, I'd say there are other problems with their data. There is NO WAY that that Witney Young and New Trier are ranked 4th and 13th in the state, try 1 or 2. There is no way that 2 Mid-Suburban East schools ranked higher than New Trier. Yes we have some good schools in our district but no way are they better than New Trier.