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• comeon... on November 30, 2003
  they should also look at the magnet and cap seperatly...
  
  just to see how freaking tough it is...
  
  No respect...
  
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• doesn't matter (View Email) on November 30, 2003
  this is so inaccurate
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• dan on November 30, 2003
  yea, every year write another stupid story about this stupid index
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• me on November 30, 2003
  isn't that kind of sad? we only got 1.997 compared to like 5.084 that RM got...
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• Anonymous on November 30, 2003
  Does this "challenge rating" take into account only the number of seniors that graduate, or does it measure the percent of freshmen who go on to graduate?
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• Anonymous on November 30, 2003
  Blair might have something to do with the magnet and CAP.
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• :/ on November 30, 2003
  With the CAP and Magnet programs we have you would expect us to be in the top ten. Blair we could do a lot better. Can someone please tell me how Springbrook got ahead of us??
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• yo on November 30, 2003
  I think it's Jay Mathews, actually. Interesting news, though.
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• kido on November 30, 2003
  How does the number of tests taken represent the difficulty of a school? I think a more accurate way of describing a school's difficulty would be to compare the test scores of standardized tests of students to the GPA of the students. Then that information would be compared based on the standardized test scores. A school that gives a 3.0 to a kid who gets 1500 on the SAT is more challenging than a school that gives a kid who scores a 1200 a 4.0 (weighted GPAs).
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• Lasco (View Email) on December 1, 2003
  Anyone who would judge a school by this criteria would be happy to buy a matress based on the way it tastes.
  
  Blair has nearly twice as many students as RM or Churchill and 1200 more than Wootton. Blair could never hope to break 3.0 ratio just based on the school size, much less the tests.
  
  Mark Twain said "... Lies, damned lies and statistics...."
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• luke on December 1, 2003
  my young critical friends: i was among your ranks last year. i was critical of mr. mathews' ratings and even wrote an editorial on it for sco. this year, though, mr. mathews has qualified his rating with a quote that the lot of you seem to have ignored: "The rating, Matthews wrote, does not measure the overall quality of the school but 'illuminates one factor that many educators and researchers consider important.'" so he's pretty much unassailable this year as far as i'm concerned.
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• kristii on December 1, 2003
  wouldnt it make more sense to look at what score those students are actually getting on the ap tests?! i know a lot of freshmen n sophomores at wootton who take classes like ap gov n ap us, then get 3s on the exams. does that really mean wootton is uber-challenging -- or just that it's trying to push as many kids through as many APs as possible??
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• Anonymous on December 1, 2003
  I wonder what rank we would be at withot CAP / Magnet...?
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• Rascal on December 1, 2003
  This is ridiculous. How in the world is Springbrook ahead of Blair.It makes no sense. What makes it even worse it that their in the top 20. I think springbrook had paid some under the table. Maybe silverchips should investigate that.
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• ok..... on December 1, 2003
  BLAH
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• Annoyed on December 2, 2003
  Down with Richard Montgomery!
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• Some guy (View Email) on December 2, 2003
  Its funny really, how RM does better than us, yet not surprising. RM is in a better area and unlike blair, the overwhelming majority of the students attending RM are not minorities. Furthermore, the IB program of RM constitutes a much larger percentage of the student body than do the CAP and Magnet programs at Blair. Personally, i would like to see a comparison between the IB and the Magnet and Cap programs or other like programs in other schools. Any other comparison is pointless and does not represent the schools accurately. I do not doubt, that if such a comparison were to be made, that it would be Blair that would come first, and RM closer to last. Evidence supporting this is shown solely in the number of intel finalists/semi-finalists from Blair and RM. 15? from Blair and 1 at most from RM? Someone please give me an accurate statistic, i remember seeing it sometime last year, yet I've forgotten it. Regardless, the results mirror what i have given.
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• Anonymous on December 2, 2003
  this is just another crappy, lying stat by j.m. i never understood his methods...
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• Hmmmm (View Email) on December 4, 2003
  Well, the IB is based at Richard Montgomery, so since it includes IB tests, wouldn't that give them a huge advantage? This is dumb, who cares what the most challanging school is?
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• magnet geek on December 4, 2003
  If RM gets to have the IB program counted for this, then Blair's magnet program should also be counted (we'd be the most challenging)
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• iajer on December 4, 2003
  who really cares??
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• RM student on December 4, 2003
  Wow Blair...Gezze that's kinda sad to see what your "ratings" are...that just tells you what school is actually better..RM!
  
  
  
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• Anarchist on December 4, 2003
  Really, guys, this rating makes sense to me. Blair should definitely not be in the top 25 most challenging schools. Come on. Understand that Blair is not the be-all, end-all of schooling, and that other schools are far better. Remember, especially you magnets, that only 1/8 of the school is magnet, and that the rest aren't exactly America's finest (no offense). Blair is NOT one of the best schools in the area.
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• bla on December 5, 2003
  i dun like this guy! blair is a lot better..and we all knowo it..so he just sucks!
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• annonymous on December 5, 2003
  Most of us agree that the criteria are pretty poor on this rating. How about average change in SAT scores per student per year? (Or PSAT). For as much data as they have on each person. I think that would say how much the school has made a difference. I mean any crap school could take 10 students who get 1600's as freshman and call itself the best school ever, and is the school doing anything? No. And AP tests taken per student... that means very little.
  
  As for why the Magnet is much less beneficial than the IB program. IB programs have tests for them just like AP tests and IB is international (as you can tell from the acronym). Anyway, they've got IB courses right in the curriculum, and if you don't take those you're probably taking AP. The Magnet, on the other hand, doesn't do much geared towards AP taking - essentially only one math and one computer science test. Obviously there's going to be a huge disparity between these numbers of tests taken, between IB and Magnet programs. It's no wonder RM made it to #1 with its IB program because the students' schedules are full of classes geared towards AP and/or IB tests, but by no means does it imply that IB is "better". Then there's the fact that IB accounts for twice as much of RM as Magnet does for Blair, Blair having vastly more minority students to boot. Gee, Blair must be a pretty bad school...
  
  At least published rankings like this one will keep down the explosion of overcrowding - why go to Blair if it's not your home school, right? heh
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• idea on December 10, 2003
  If we really cared about this we could give ap tests to every student. Since it doesn't matter what they get we would be first place.
  
  In some schools where money is given based on these rankings the schools do this. This is why so many people get 1s on the AP.
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• Joe Smith on January 4, 2004
  just for the record, if you were to take the IB vs. the Magnet, IB would still win.. for you see, the Magnet is too centered on the sciences, something that is obviously redundant and overly unimportant... i wish i would have gone to rm...
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