Hamilton Southeastern High School has been ranked as an outstanding school on two prestigious lists this month. U.S. News & World Report places HSEHS on its ‘Best High School’ silver list. The local school also was designated a “Head of the Class” school for 2008 by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce’s 10th annual Indiana’s Best Buys report.
Hamilton Southeastern is one of only 10 schools from the state’s 350 public schools to receive that distinction. The goal of the 2008 Best Buys report is to identify and honor schools that are excelling by offering the highest levels of academic achievement for the lowest amount of tax dollars. Read more about the report and view the press release at http://www.indianachamber.com/index.php/press-releases/
The study examined 349 Indiana public high schools and charter schools with data from the Indiana Department of Education. Using ISTEP+ pass rates, ISTEP+ Pass+ rates, graduation rates, SAT participation rates and average composite scores and Advanced Placement (AP) passing scores, the Indiana Chamber developed a total school performance index for each school.
This index, called the school’s quality index, was then compared to each school’s total revenue per pupil to determine “Best Buy” schools. From that list, “Honor Roll” schools were selected based on each school’s at-risk student/poverty rate, as measured by participation in the federal free/reduced lunch program.
For 2008, 132 public high schools were designated as “Best Buy” schools for giving taxpayers the most value for their money. Two methods determined this honor. A school earned that designation if it had a quality index above the state median and revenues below the statewide median of $9,313 per student. The second method was by having a quality index ranking that was 20 percent higher than the school’s revenues.
In addition, from the best buy group, 23 high schools were given the “Honor Roll” distinction for excelling academically despite having at-risk student demographics above the statewide median. For their exemplary efforts, the top five schools from the Best Buy and Honor Roll lists were then selected as “Head of the Class” members.
Hamilton Southeastern High School also is one of five high schools in Indiana awarded “silver” recognition by U.S. News & World Report’s Best High School evaluation and ranking.
According to U.S.News & World Report, its America’s Best High Schools methodology, developed by School Evaluation Services, a K-12 education data research business run by Standard & Poor’s, is based on the key principles that a great high school must serve all its students well, not just those who are bound for college and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes to show that the school is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators.
The magazine analyzed 21,069 public high schools in 48 states using data from the 2006-2007 school year. This is the total number of public high schools in each state that had grade-12 enrollment and sufficient data to analyze primarily for the 2006-2007 school year. A three-step process determined the best high schools. The first two steps ensured that the schools serve all their students well, using state proficiency standards as the measuring benchmarks. For those schools that made it past the first two steps, a third step assessed the degree to which schools prepare students for college-level work.
For more information about ranked schools, go to http://www.usnews.com/sections/education/high-schools/
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