US News rankings

This today from the Superintendent explaining the new US News rankings.

Subject: US News Rankings

Hi All,

Just an FYI…The US News HS rankings came out today and it has caused issues statewide. They changed the methodology for this year and it has changed the rankings for many districts.

Medfield is ranked 6th in the State for college readiness. This is essentially the metric used for ranking High Schools and is one of the highest rankings ever in Medfield. Only Boston Latin (an exam school) and Hopkinton (also not given an overall ranking) are ahead of us. The others are charter schools. This is great news for our students and teachers.

Medfield is ranked 14th in the State for Math

Medfield is ranked 27th in the State for English

However, the change in methodology looks at the students deemed ” economically disadvantaged” by US News. That is 2% of our students or 4 kids in the grade level. The scores for our kids in this range did not make the threshold established by US News. Because of this they wont give us an overall ranking. This is frustrating knowing that last year we were a gold medal school and last June officials from AP contacted us because Medfield High School had the highest percentage of students in MA taking Advanced Placement Courses AND the highest average scores in MA on the exams.

Other districts that were not given overall rankings include:

Weston

Lincoln-Sudbury

Hopkinton

Holliston

Lynnfield

Natick

Hamilton -Wenham

Medway

Burlington

Pentucket

Algonquin

and many others typically ranked.

I just wanted you to have the info in case you are asked by residents. We let US News know to expect push back as many high performing districts in MA were not given overall rankings this year.

Thanks,

Jeff

—

Jeffrey J. Marsden, Ed.D

Superintendent

Medfield Public Schools

508-359-2302

Follow me on Twitter @JeffreyJMarsden