As a military spouse, I know schools can be the biggest factor on where to live in a military town. I came across the Washington's Post High School Challenge, where they rank schools nationwide. I thought this would be helpful to those who are moving to the Hampton Roads area, which consists of Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Chesapeake, Hampton, and Newport News.
The Washington Post's High School Challenge ranks the schools based off the total number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Advanced International Certificate of Education tests given at a school each year and divide by the number of seniors who graduated in May or June. They base these rankings on the amount of AP tests given, not the amount of students who passed the exams. This may be a contraversial issue because a poor student may not do well on the test, but since they sat and took the test, their school gets credit for the test taken therefore helping their High School Challenge ranking. On the flip side, some schools only let their top students take the AP exams which inflates their percentage of passing scores.
Jay Matthews from the Washington Post comments, "I decided not to count passing rates in this way because I found that many high schools kept those rates artificially high by allowing only top students to take the courses. AP, IB and AICE are important because they give average students a chance to experience the trauma of heavy college reading lists and long, analytical college examinations. Research has found that even low-performing students who got a 2 on an AP test did significantly better in college than similar students who did not take AP."
To give readers a better perspective on how well each school’s students are doing on the tests, the Washington Post includes the Equity and Excellence Rate (E&E). It is the percentage of all graduating seniors, including those who never took an AP course, who had at least one score of 3 or above on at least one AP test sometime in high school.
Click here for the full list of The High School Challenge. (note the rankings change from week to week. I am waiting a response from the editor as to why the rankings keep changing)
Below are the Hampton Roads schools that made the list for 2014. Rankings may change from week to week, these rankings are from April 11, 2014.
Hampton Roads consists of Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Chesapeake, Hampton, and Newport News. Yorktown is located just Northeast of Newport News.
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Additional Resources:
- PCSing to Hampton Roads? Download our PCS Guide to Hampton Roads (Norfolk/Virginia Beach Area
