Jay Mathews explains why he does not accept criticism about his Challenge Index for ranking high schools. He started ranking high schools in 1998. Public school evangelists continue to criticize the index.

To create the index for a given group of schools, I calculated the number of AP or IB tests given at each school, then divided by the number of students in the June graduating class, so that big schools would not have an advantage over small ones. Using the graduating class as an indicator of school size tends to level the playing field for schools that draw from low-income neighborhoods with heavy dropout rates, because the strength of each AP or IB program is measured only against the number of students who are committed enough to earn a diploma.

Mathew's rationale for the Challenge Index makes sense. It smarts that a journalist and not an educator created it.

That embarrassment aside, the Challenge Index gives priority to each school's attention to the most gifted and talented students. I wonder what other indices account directly for changing support a school makes for these students?

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