Gee, no mention of lighted Astroturf fields or solar panels.

I guess we really don't need those kinds of things.

We should all burn copies of NJ Monthly and have a bonfire to celebrate a great High School- The hell with that stupid magazine.

http://westfield.patch.com/articles/dolan-class-size-calculation-contributed-to-whs-ranking-drop

Peggy has the same excuses every time the ranking drops. WHS was #22 in 2006 and has dropped steadily since. It's time the town drops her and the principal.

Wow. 2006: 22nd, 2008: 27th, 2010: 41st, 2012: 49th. Impressive; very impressive. I think it is time for a change.

I vote YES for a turf field and lights .............................at Roosevelt.

Maybe the Board can sue NJ monthly like they sued the state to protect Dolan's illegal contract. Schools get worse; administrators get more money. Sign me up!

After looking at the chart, and even after scraping the data off the PDF and putting it into Excel, it is hard to see how Westfield ranked 49th out of the top 50.

Westfield ranks 30th in class size, but the student/teacher ratio is 44th – perhaps some schools might include teachers that don't teach classes.

Westfield ranks 35th in advanced degree earned percentage - more degrees, higher pay..

Westfield ranks 12th in SAT score, and second to New Providence in union county. I know last year Westfield was highest in the county, so perhaps the data there is old.

Westfield ranks 25th in AP tests offered - some schools offer a test w/o the course.

On the percent of AP tests with a grade of 3 plus, Westfield ranks 19th, and does not limit who can take a course like other schools.

For the state advanced proficiency ratings, Westfield ranks 9th for language, and 10th for math - the best indicators of implemenation of the state curriculum.

In the state graduation rate metric Westfield ranks 21st overall.

Based upon all the above, I would assume Westfield would be closer to 25. NJ Monthly does not release the exact data used for the calculation.

I would take the rankings with a lot of salt.

Gary, why are you still carrying water for the Board? The changes that NJ Monthly made since the last round should have helped Westfield's rank, not hurt it. They began weighting four year colleges over technical schools and junior colleges. They eliminated computer to student ratio as a metric. They changed how they weight student/teacher ratio.
All should have helped. But the Board still protects failed administrators and forces fields on the taxpayers at the request of a few leagues.

Read the article. "The data for students going to four-year colleges was given extra weight, making it a potent driver of the results."
It's not about graduation rate.
http://njmonthly.com/articles/towns_and_schools/top-new-jersey-high-schools-2012-.html

WHS has dropped from a respectable 22nd to a dismal 49th in six years.  In corporate America, that is failure, and the taxpayers who support this failure recognize it as such.

In 2010, this was the excuse for the decline: "We read the directions literally in this district....if you read it literally you included all of your students. But if you read it literally you did not use all of your teachers."

In 2012, we got this excuse: ''New Jersey Monthly’s rankings included not only student achievement criteria, but also non-performance indicators, such as student/faculty ratio.'

Like a teenager making excuses for declining grades, the administration keeps blaming everything and everyone but themselves. What is next, blame the students? Blame the taxpayers? Maybe it is time to look inward, agree there is a problem and make some changes to stop the slide.

Anyone who thinks we should be ashamed for being ranked 49th should take a closer look at what these rankings are really based on. I am a product of the Westfield school system, and in no world can Westfield and Cranford be ranked that closely together. I wouldn't take these too seriously. Westfield is ranked in a very high group the the state, and Cranford is not.

Can we really rely on these magazines to determine the success of WHS and its administrators? Can't we look at the successes of our students scores, colleges attended and general satisfaction of the parents and students - these are the people who know WHS best. After all, how can you think these rankings are reliable if one report has WHS as the top in Union County, and another has them ranked 49? This seems like an assessment that is not valid, and isn't worth the mud slinging seen above. Oh, and BOE Watcher, there are many colleges in the area who offer masters programs in supervision and administration - think it's easy and profitable - enroll! Here's a link to get you started.
http://collegeprowler.com/search/st-nj/sm1-educational-administration-and-supervision/

One frequently overlooked point of these surveys is directly linked to something every Westfield resident should care about: property value. The quality of the Westfield school system has long been one of the most attractive aspects of this town; it draws new families to town from the NY Metropolitan area as well as those relocating from across the country. Most of us were happy to pay a premium to move here because of the reputation of great schools. Does anyone think that a new family researching towns to move to is going to be impressed by this historic trend? When the administration fails in this way repeatedly, it has an negative economic impact on every citizen in Westfield. Please don't bother to argue whether the survey is accurate or not or meaningful or not, because neither really matters as much as perception. The results (valid or not) are out there, and the town is worse because of it.

I believe there are at least a few things that we can agree on:
- NJ Monthly changed the way ratings were developed, so a strict year-to-year comparison is not possible
- NJ Monthly is not clear enough (so it can be reproduced) on the methodology quoted above that produces the ranking.
- There is no "generally acceptable" broad-based ranking of high schools
- There are variables that cannot be objectively measured that would factor into how "good" a high school is

Would I rather that Westfield be ranked #1 - of course. Should the administration periodically review how they are doing related to other schools and come up with an improvement plan on key areas - absolutely! Should that be entirely driven by the NJ Monthly survey (which has no known basis) - no.

What we should be asking, regardless of a #1 or #49 ranking, is how WHS is assessing itself, and how have they improved performance over the years on key metrics. I would ask the administration's view on class size, the student/teacher ratio, and if the 4-year college entrance rate is acceptable (for the latest data, WHS was at 84%, New Providence was at 86% - see below URL). In fact, if you compare the numbers NY Monthly reports between WHS and New Providence, there is not that much of a difference - significant? BTW NP only offers 19 AP's,

URL for the overall data:
http://www.state.nj.us/education/data/
College entrance data :
http://www.state.nj.us/education/data/grd/grd11/county.htm

Doug,
You and the former principal are correct that these ratings are all inherently flawed. But you said yourself, the school was rated highly under previous superintendents and principals. The downward trend is what's disturbing, not the current low number.
Current administrators whine about NJ monthly while talking up the Star-Ledger and Newsweek ratings. This Renwick guy contradicts himself in one statement!
"he is surprised at NJ Monthly 'placing considerable value on non-performance indicators....Most important, I continue to be impressed with their accomplishments in all areas, including fine arts, extra-curricular activities, community service, and athletics.'"
Is he aware that all those things he listed are "non-performance indicators?"

Gary, please don't lecture me on the information age. I'm old enough to remember what acquiring information was like pre-WWW, thank you, but I think that you over-estimate the average persons willingness to dig into the detail behind a magazines criteria and process; most people will read the survey and stop there. You are kidding yourself if you think that this survey will not be a negative check mark for people considering moving to town, but that doesn't surprise me, because you seem willing to blindly defend the system and the administration that got us here in the first place.

Mike, you are right, this will be a negative check mark (nor did I imply that it would be ignored) but we do have the option of responding in hopes of clearing it the misconcpetion more than we did pre-internet age. And no, I don't blindly defend the system - I'm all for getting as much information out there to let people make up their own minds.

Yes, people can be lazy and not go any further in their searches, but if enough rebuttals are out there, at least there is the chance they will be read. If one wants to..

And "performance indicators" are just in the eye of the beholder - everyone searches for whatever they want to find...

Mike, this strand and the like are what detracts from people's perception of Westfield schools, not NJ Monthly.

Fred and I finally agree on something. This thread doesn't make the Westfield Schools look good. A self-proclaimed product of Westfield High School can't tell principal from principle.

Fred, you are correct, a string of comments in which people like you blame the survey and atttack the critics of those responsible for the downward trend instead of focusing on the root causes of the problem certainly will detract from people's perception of the town. You have convinced me; it is better to just pretend that everything is fine. Oh, thank you, I feel so much better now that I am kidding myself.

Any time, Mike. I guess throwing any benefit of the doubt towards the schools is counterintuitive on the Patch.

This really is an amazing town with fantastic opportunities for the growth of our children. Kuddos Westfield!

Fred, the drop from 22nd to 27th and from 27th to 41st emptied my 'benefit of doubt' account. The drop from 41st to 49th tells me that the previous drops weren't flukes. But enough said here; I now have a better understanding why nothing will change.

I thought the changes that were made by voters to the BOE members were supposed to fix this. I guess the change agents are not as effective as they thought they would be.

I have looked at the numbers in the PDF closely, comparing to other schools, and it is incomprehensible how Westfield could be ranked so low - Westfield exceeds other schools, that are ranked significantly higher, in 7 of the 9 categories, including all results in Performance and Outcome criteria (which are weighted more), yet is still ranked much lower than these schools. Well, I think I have figured it out. The one criteria that is absolutely killing us is number of AP tests AS A RATIO OF ENROLLMENT...this is an extremely important distinction. Our ratio of 21 courses for an enrollment of 450 is very low and one of the worst ratios in the rankings. Unfortunately this is a bogus method to calculate and greatly hurts schools with large enrollments. I do agree an adjustment needs to be made so as to not hurt schools with smaller enrollments, but a straight ratio calculation is inaccuratte. Think of it this way...the most tests offered in the state is 31. If School A with an enrollment of 250 students offered 31 tests, and School B with 500 students offers the same 31 tests, School A would receive a much higher score despite both schools offering the most tests available...School B couldn't do more in this category but is hurt by its larger enrollment. The current calculation assumes if you double enrollment you should double number of tests offered, which is wrong. If this criteria were removed I estimate Westfield would jump into the top 25. Continued below..

Continuing my observation from previous comment RE AP Tests....It seems some schools are manipulating this figure by offering tests without the courses, perhaps Westfield should do the same.

I agree that unfortunately perception is reality, but the reality is also that Westfield results are very very strong, and ridiculous calculations and rankings do not change the fact that our kids, and my daughter at WHS, are receiving a wonderful education and are afforded great educational opportunity.  Our administration should be credited for these strong results...if anything they are guilty of not manipulating data and playing the game as well as some other towns may be.