Oak Park High School called 95th best in U.S. by Newsweek magazine

By Lori Porter

Acorn Staff Writer

Oak Park High School (OPHS) should be full of pride after being ranked No. 95 in last week’s issue of Newsweek magazine on its list of the 100 best high schools in America.

Jay Matthews, who wrote the Newsweek article, is an author, education reporter and columnist for The Washington Post who’s devised a system for ranking public schools. It’s called the "Challenge Index." It’s determined by taking the number of Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests taken by all students at a particular school in 2002, divided by the number of graduating seniors.

It’s called the challenge index because it’s designed to measure schools that educationally stimulate average students. It doesn’t consider schools that have few or no average students. The OPHS challenge index was 2.382.

OPHS Principal Cliff Moore said, "This validates the open program that we have developed for our Advanced Placement (AP) courses." It’s program that, according to Moore, allows students to choose whether or not they will take AP courses.

Moore went on to explain that as the AP program has evolved over the past four to five years, they’ve allowed students to select AP courses, only intervening if they felt a student was in over his or her head.

OPHS currently offers 17 AP courses in the 10th through 12th grades. A freshman must pre-qualify during their ninth-grade year, by getting A’s or B’s in either regular or honor classes before they can enroll in AP courses.

Generally, OPHS assigns teachers to AP classes who step forward and say they’re interested in teaching at that level. They look for instructors with a strong background in a particular area.

"For a teacher, an AP class is a mixture of the best and the worst," said Moore, explaining that the pressure on teachers is immense but the rewards are also great because generally, students who enroll in AP classes are up for the challenge and eager to go the extra mile.

According to the Newsweek article, AP course popularity is growing at such a fast rate that it could possibly replace the current SAT and ACT as America’s most influential test for college entrance.

Harvard University’s Dean of Admissions says AP is already a better predictor of how a student will do in college, than the SAT.

Moore agreed, saying that the reason is because it’s a one shot deal. AP students only have that one chance to get a good grade. Also it measures a student’s comprehension in a specific subject. The SAT is a broad test that covers various disciplines and students can take the SAT repeatedly.

OPHS hasn’t conducted its exit survey for this year’s senior class, but preliminary inquiries reveal that so far, two seniors will be attending Yale, one will go to Harvard and two have been accepted to Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley.

To keep things in perspective, Moore said, "It is nice to be recognized, but we still have our issues." He continued, "There are plenty of other high schools that do better than us in certain areas."

The Newsweek article concurs with Moore’s statement by revealing that there are other local high schools which were ranked within the top 700 high schools in America.

Also mentioned was Westlake at No. 132, Calabasas at No. 260, Newbury Park at No. 515, Thousand Oaks at No. 575 and Agoura at No. 683.