Dear Mount Vernon Community,


As in prior years, Jay Mathews’ 2012 Challenge Index (CI) for high schools will be published soon in the Washington Post. Mathews will also write an article focusing on Mount Vernon High School and the fact that the number of IB exams administered at MVHS dropped below the number needed to make the national list. Because this ranking of schools is another tool used by some to measure the quality of instruction at a school, I want to provide clarification of what this means from the perspective of our administration, faculty, and staff.

Jay Mathews ranks each school using a simple formula he devised. He takes the number of college-level tests, such as AP or IB exams, taken at each school and divides that number by the number of graduating seniors. Last year, MVHS was ranked 130th out of the 184 Washington-area schools included in the Challenge Index based on the number of IB exams divided by the number of MVHS graduates in the class of 2010. Here are two observations from that report:

- Mount Vernon had a Challenge Index ranking of 1.303, placing it in the top 7% of schools in the nation that challenge their students to take IB or AP exams. Additionally, a CI (Challenge Index) score of 1.000 or above places a school on the national list that he generates. Last year, the national list included over 2,000 schools.
- Mathews also reported the Equity in Excellence value (originally developed by the College Board, the organization that administers the AP exams). This value indicates the percentage of the senior class that took and passed at least one AP or IB test. All 12th grade students are considered, including those not taking AP or IB classes. An average score of 17% is reported as the Equity in Excellence value for all U.S. high schools. However, at MVHS, our Equity in Excellence value was reported to be 32%, placing the school substantially above the national average.

For his upcoming story, Mathews will report that MVHS administered only 338 exams (337 IB exams and 1 AP exam) in May 2011 to a graduating class of 343 students. Using Mathews’ formula, our Challenge Index for this year should be .985 (338 exams/343 seniors). Effectively, this should drop MVHS down slightly on the Washington-area list. More notably, this will exclude MVHS from the national list that Mathews generates for the first time since his Challenge Index was conceived approximately 13 years ago. MVHS will miss being named in the natonal list of the Challenge Index by only five exams.
any other schools failed to make the list?

Mt. Vernon has become a ghetto, nigger infested school that has deteriorated significantly from the 1970's and 1980's. Try to go up there in the early evening and stand in the gym lobby . There is no supervision and there's between 10-30 monkeys walking/running around, doing their usual thing.
Mt. Vernon, aside from being plagued by violence and gangs, mostly niggers, but a few illiterate hispanics as well, has the lowest SAT scores in Fairfax County. Most sane white parents have sent their kids to private schools. Just walk around the school for a few hours one day, or walk the halls, and you'll really see what kind of school it is.

usernmae44 Wrote:
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> MVHS will miss being
> named in the natonal list of the Challenge Index
> by only five exams.
> any other schools failed to make the list?

How do you know this already, and how would we know prior to Mathews' publishing the new list?

unknown Wrote:
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> How do you know this already, and how would we
> know prior to Mathews' publishing the new list?

Looks like the principal or equivalent sent out a letter to parents.

And...

Probably the guy publishing these (questionable) scores sends the information to the schools for review/comment before publishing them.

Are you kidding me? What was that b.s. called back in the day, some sort of curve?(Grading curve maybe)