Criticism of national rating for school district

This writer’s letter to a national periodical was also copied to the editor Newsweek, Your recent high school ratings placed our regional school system here in Pike County, Pennsylvania, among the top 6% nationally “based on how hard school staffs work to challenge students with advanced placement college-level courses and tests,” as your web site states the criterion you used. Our district is displaying your rating on a sign facing the the highway where the school is located. Some in the community are shocked, nay aghast, at your rating. Many of us have been working for decades to improve education here, which has historically been below even state averages in Pennsylvania. Over the last five years, for example, we have goaded and embarrassed the administration into improving SAT scores, to the point where they are now at least hitting Pennsylvania’s mean. I say “at least” because Pennsylvania is ranked fifth from the bottom among states with high SAT participation. And last year our district, which you rate so highly, failed to bring 125 elementary students up to the state’s admittedly low standards on its PSSA (standardized achievement), which is administered to all public schools in the Pennsylvania. In 2010, of our graduating class of 478 we are sending exactly one student to an Ivy League university -- all eight of which are, incidentally, within virtual walking distance of our high school campus. Over the last fifteen years, we have sent four graduates to those schools, and one of those students washed out after a year. Our normal placements, to Penn State satellite schools, are regularly compelled to complete non-credit courses because they are not prepared for college-level work. The plaudit you served, not based on objective criteria, is functioning to fluff the egos of a thoroughly mediocre, entrenched administration and counseling staff. They will be encouraged to do more of the same. You have done more harm than good. I expected more of a prestigious national publication such as yours Anthony Splendora Milford