The Challenge Index

The school was buzzing earlier on this week as the Challenge Index was released showing the top 100 most challenging schools in the U.S. We came in at #76, which was quite the coup as I believe we were in the 300s last year. As it's been said elsewhere, we're had a little help in beefing up the numbers of students taking AP classes / tests - all juniors and seniors have to take AP English. Without opening the debate on if AP-for-All is a good idea of not, I'd like to think of some of the positives of us being ranked. Even if many kids struggle through these classes, I know that when they get to college, their early English classes won't see as intimidating. I think they may balk at the amount of reading coming their way, but I'd like to think that when writing essays, they've seen a bunch of what is to come. Likewise, I know DC school don't have the best rep with college admissions, and in some ways this will be a nice pay off for our students' hard work if an admissions officer happens to have our school's name in the back of their memory somewhere. yeah, I'm the optimist. Either way, it's a start, and an attempt at drastically changing things, which is much better than doing nothing at all.

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/challengeindex/2008/