Wilton High Ranked #1 Best High School in Connecticut by Newsweek [Updated]

Update at 3:48 p.m:

Patch recieved this response from Superintendent Gary Richards after Patch asked the Wilton Board of Education to comment on Newsweek's rankings. 

"I believe it is fair to say that we have mixed feelings about this recognition.  On one hand, it is gratifying to have Wilton High School recognized in a national publication.  However, we believe that such recognition that is largely based on performance on SAT tests and the number of students who take AP or International Baccalaureate tests (IB) is incomplete.   

In past years, a group of superintendents in the Tri State areas have expressed our views on this ranking.  We have stated,

'According to research, the most highly effective schools offer a challenging and rigorous curriculum, and provide an atmosphere where ALL students can learn. Factors such as maintaining small class size, hiring excellent teachers with advanced degrees and gaining acceptances to the nation's top-tier private and public colleges are also important benchmarks for success. Student achievement is clearly a complex recipe with many ingredients and has to be looked at on a continuum, and cannot be derived from a finite set of statistics.'

'In reality, it is impossible to know which high schools are "the best" in the nation. The determination of the relative quality of education offered at a school is ideally based on many different measures, including students' overall academic accomplishments, the “habits of mind” they develop through their school experiences and their subsequent performance in college.  Such an investigation into quality should also take into consideration the unique needs of the communities they serve.'

Respectfully,

Gary G. Richards

Superintendent of Schools"

Original Story:

Wiltonians have long been proud of their town's education system. And now, they can say with even more confidence that Wilton has the best high school in Connecticut.

That's what the popular magazine Newsweek reported this week in a survey-and ranking system that sought to find the top high schools in the country.

With a 15.2 student-to-teacher ratio, a 96 percent graduation rate, a 95 percent college-bound rate, average SAT scores of 1810 and an average of 2.1 college-level tests per graduating senior, Wilton is considered the best high school in Connecticut, according to Newsweek, and #141 out of 500 schools ranked throughout the country.

Neighboring Joel Barlow High School ranked as sixth best in Connecticut.

Methodology

 Rankings were determined by the following methodology: A school’s four-year, on-time graduation rate (25 percent of the score), percent of 2010 graduates who enrolled immediately in college (25 percent), number of college-level tests (AP, IB and AICE) taken, divided by the number of graduating seniors (25 percent), the average SAT and/or ACT score (10 percent), the average AP/IB/AICE exam score (10 percent) and the amount of AP/IB/AICE courses offered per graduate (5 percent).

 Students who did not enroll in college immediately after graduation were not included in the methodology; neither were students who took more than four years to graduate were not calculated into the on-time graduation rate, according to the report’s methodology explanation.

 Newsweek said that schools “had to complete a survey requesting specific data from the 2009-2010 academic year.” Eleven-hundred schools were surveyed and out of those 500 were selected.

 If a school did not respond to the survey, or supplied incorrect data and did not correct the flawed data “within the specified timeframe,” the school was not considered, the report states.

“We enlisted a panel of experts—Wendy Kopp of Teach For America, Tom Vander Ark of Open Education Solutions (formerly executive director for education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), and Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford professor of education and founder of the School Redesign Network—to develop a yardstick that fully reflects a school’s success turning out college-ready (and life-ready) students,” Newsweek states on their website.