In its annual ranking of America’s most challenging high schools, the Washington Post listed Bromfield at number 1,004. Bromfield stands near the midpoint of the 2,323 schools nationwide that made the list this year. That total is about 12 percent of U.S. schools overall. Within Massachusetts, Bromfield is 47th among the 141 schools that made the list, which came out last week.
The Post’s formula for ranking the schools is based on a single number. The newspaper adds up the number of advanced placement, international baccalaureate, and Advanced International Certificate of Education tests that are given at the school in a year and then divides the total by the number of seniors who graduated that year. In other words, if a school gave a total of 200 advanced tests and had 100 seniors graduating, the school would get a score of 2.
Unlike some other high school rankings, the Post list does not count only students who earn passing scores on those tests. Jay Mathews, the Post columnist and blogger who has overseen the list for 30 years, writes, “Even students who do not pass AP exams appear to benefit from struggling in high school with the long reading lists and exams demanded of them in college.” He cites a large study of Texas high school graduates, all with low SAT test scores. The study concluded that students who had taken an AP course but scored only a 2 on the AP test still did better in college than students with similar SAT scores who had not taken an AP course.
