The following letter was sent in response to a question concerning why neither West Windsor-Plainsboro high school was listed in Newsweek magazine’s listing of the top 1257 high schools in the nation.##M:[more]##
A major criterion for the Newsweek standings is the weight placed upon the percentage of students in a district that take an Advanced Placement class and actually sit for the exam. Students in WW-P have done consistently well on these national examinations. If you review data from the past years, you will see a strong showing as well as an increase in the number of students taking the tests and in the number of tests offered for the students in both of our high schools. It is important to note that we do not require students taking AP classes to sit for the AP examination.
The West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District provided aggregated data to Newsweek for its recent survey, as we had done in the past. Aggregated data is data from both high schools. Our profile is for our regional school district and we report (to colleges) only aggregate data. We have always done this in the past.
A few weeks after this information was submitted, we received a request to disaggregate the data, which is not how we report high school data on our college profile. Hence, Newsweek did not consider our aggregated data in its 2007 survey of high schools.
Last week we sent the disaggregated data to Newsweek, with the possibility of being added to its on-line listing. We hope to hear from them shortly.
Gerri Hutner
Information Officer, WW-P School District
