Newsweek magazine has a list of the top 1,200 public schools in America. It shouldn't come as a big surprise that no Lenoir County schools are on the list, but 50 other North Carolina schools are.
Here's the way the schools were chosen, according to Newsweek: "Public schools are ranked according to a ratio … that is the number of Advanced Placement and/or International Baccalaureate tests taken by all students at a school in 2005 divided by the number of graduating seniors. All of the schools on the list have an index of at least 1.000; they are in the top 5 percent of public schools measured this way."
Other criteria include the percentage of students receiving subsidized meals, and the number of graduating students who had at least one passing grade on one Advance Placement or International Baccalaureate test.
Preconceptions about schools, and education in general, suggest that schools with students who get free meals serve a lower economic class. In other words, those students come from poor homes where learning might not be a priority; where only one parent raises them, maybe. Ipso facto: Less parental involvement and lower test scores.
Newsweek blows that theory out the window. Raleigh's Charter School has no free-lunch students and is ranked 53rd in the nation. But only a finger's width down the list - at No. 66 - is Charlotte's Harding University School with 48.9 percent of its students getting free lunches. Rose in Greenville is No. 632 with 30 percent. Lake Normal in Mooresville has only 4 percent of its students getting free lunches and the school came in at No. 809, while Garinger in Charlotte is ranked No. 554 with 70.3 percent of free-lunch students. Almost half the schools have 40 percent or more free-lunch students and several have 60 percent and more.
Go figure.
Most of these school buildings are not new, so that can't be the answer to their success. Others, obviously, are not wealthy, so that can't be the answer either. So, where would we find the answer to creating good schools that produce smart students?
It's difficult to imagine that these students don't get plenty of encouragement from home, whether they're children from well-to-do, moderate income, or lower income families. Children don't succeed without support.
Even more important, though, is what goes on in the classrooms of the nation's top-ranked schools. Nothing is more important to a child's education than a teacher. A student with the tiniest bit of motivation - and sometimes a student with no motivation at all - can become a winner when his teacher excites his imagination and stimulates his brain.
Congratulations to all the teachers of all the students in the 1,200 top schools across the country. Instead of envying them, we need to begin emulating them - today!
For more information on Newsweek's list, go to
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12532678?sort=raa.
Lee Raynor is editor of KinstonPress.com. She can be reached at
leeraynor@kinstonpress.com, or at 252-361-7530.
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