School Ranking

[bubble sunglasses]

Hehe, mine was four hundred and something.

Mao can be even prouder

[Jeffree]

schools with IB get shafted in this ranking.

[Mao]

Hehe, mine was four hundred and something.

Mao can be even prouder

can't be as bad as 485

[dshban]

388, whee... I get to be school captain of this smart bunch too. Hooray.

[Eriny]

Hehe, mine was four hundred and something.

Mao can be even prouder

can't be as bad as 485

Not quite. 427.

[RD]

253! Damn a lot higher than I thought!!

[kurrymuncher]

253! Damn a lot higher than I thought!!

what school??

[nerd]

Mine got 10th! Not as good as previous years. Wow...I sound like such a pretentious wanker.

[RD]

253! Damn a lot higher than I thought!!

what school??

look on the list.

[AppleXY]

383

TOP THAT LOL

[Flaming_Arrow]

359 represent!

[bekkchyeah]

388, whee... I get to be school captain of this smart bunch too. Hooray.

hahaha our school sucks so bad

[Velox]

dam, my school was rubbish this year, only 32! Though we have a high % of top students take the IB course, so we did get hit the that a bit, plus last year was a rubbish cohort.

[IntoTheNewWorld]

well i guess Mao just shows that you can get good marks whatever school you go to.  Has anyone read freakonomics? Its hard to explain how they worked it out but in chicago, students who WANTED to go to a top school did a lot better than those who didn't, but whether they actually got into a top school made no difference to their actual score.

And yeah, its a bit skewed as well because of those schools that kick people out right before exams in they're not doing very well in school and stuff like that.

Well yeah...you can generally get high marks in most schools. It's just how likely it is. A mark like Mao's is pretty much a miracle in his school, but happens every year in the top schools. Maybe Mao would've got even higher at a top school, but we'll never know.

[brendan]

well i guess Mao just shows that you can get good marks whatever school you go to.  Has anyone read freakonomics? Its hard to explain how they worked it out but in chicago, students who WANTED to go to a top school did a lot better than those who didn't, but whether they actually got into a top school made no difference to their actual score.

Given that i do closely follow the economic research on this, I highly doubt that Steven Levitt would make the argument that what school you go to, doesn't matter.

EDIT: Harvard Econ Prof Caroline Hoxby explains:
http://www.educationforum.org.nz/documents/publications/hoxby_2006.pdf
Do Chicago charter schools improve education for students who attend
them? In a recent study of Chicago charter schools, Jonah Rockoff and I have
shown that the answer is yes.2

Applicants to the charter schools in the study were 74 percent Black, 22 percent Hispanic and 81 percent
poor. Using longitudinal data, we compared charter school applicants who
were randomly admitted (the ‘lotteried-in’) and who consequently attended
charter schools with applicants who were randomly not admitted (the
‘lotteried-out’) and who consequently continued to attend Chicago’s regular
public schools. We were able to ascertain that the Chicago charter school
lotteries were indeed fair. The lotteried-in and lotteried-out students were
almost identical in terms of race, ethnicity, family income, home location,
special education status, limited English proficiency, and prior achievement
in the regular public schools (see Figure 1).

After following both groups of students, we found that, after two years,
lotteried-in students who attended charter schools had mathematics and
reading achievement that was about 6 percentile points higher than lotteriedout
students who continued in regular public schools (see Figure 2). To put
these gains in context, 6 percentile points is more than half of the difference in
achievement between very disadvantaged students in the United States (like
the ones served by the charter schools in the study) and typical students in
the United States.3

Do magnet schools produce similar gains? The answer appears to be no.
In a recent study, Julie Cullen, Brian Jacob and Steven Levitt compared students
who were lotteried-in and lotteried-out of the magnet schools.4

that students did just as well in the regular public schools as in the magnet
schools. Now, when we think about the structure of magnet schools, this
should come as no surprise: the schools do not qualify as a form of school
choice because they lack its essential properties. Sadly, the authors of this
study have created great confusion by not describing the magnet schools’
structure clearly and by not distinguishing them from school choice. Indeed,
they have done the opposite and described magnet schools as a classic form of
school choice despite expressions of concern from fellow economists and
despite the fact that many areas of the United States have had magnet schools
for years without regarding them as a form of school choice.