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Light Drizzle Fog/Mist East Meadow, Clarke high schools make Newsweek's top 500
Two of only eight in Nassau County on list
East Meadow and W.T. Clarke high schools both made Newsweek’s most recent list of the top 500 public high schools in the country, which was posted on the magazine’s website earlier this month. Newsweek has compiled the annual list since 1998. East Meadow is ranked No. 233, and Clarke, 317. They are two of only eight Nassau County high schools that made the list.
Newsweek used a different system than in previous years to rank the schools. In the past, it used data from self-reported surveys provided by school district personnel. This year, however, it partnered with Westat, a research corporation based in Maryland, to create a rankings analysis that rewarded schools based on student performance, focusing on graduation rates, SAT and ACT scores, and the percentage of students who take at least one Advanced Placement course.
Newsweek collected its data from the National Center for Education Statistics to supplement self-reported information, using data from the 2011-12 school year — the most recent data available from the NCES. In explaining the change, Newsweek wrote on its website, “We wanted to use this publicly available, government-vetted data for our threshold analysis to make our methodology more stringent and reliable, rather than using all self-reported school data.”
The magazine noted, however, that a large number of schools did not have enough data available from the NCES to be included in its analysis. In total, more than 14,000 schools were considered.
Louis DeAngelo, superintendent of the East Meadow School District, said he was delighted with the recognition, pointing out that the use of objective data made it extra meaningful. “We are proud of the work of our schools and are glad to have that work recognized by Newsweek’s prestigious list,” he said.
In Newsweek’s 2013 list, which ranked the top 2,000 public high schools, Clarke ranked 494th, and East Meadow was not ranked.
Another new feature in the rankings was a separate list, of the top 500 public high schools “that beat the odds, performing better than statistically expected for their level of poverty,” according to Newsweek’s website.
