The Return of the Sig

Signature School was ranked by Newsweek as the 54th best public high school in the nation. Not bad! (Next Indiana school is North Central, at #301) It's actually an increase from how we would have ranked my senior year. Congrats to the teachers, faculty, and students at Sig for this recognition! Why are AP scores the main criteria for making this list, you ask? Well, there are valid complaints that "teaching to the test" occurs. But in my opinion, knowing the material on the AP test well enough to get a 4 or 5 usually means knowing the subject well enough to excel in an equivalent non-AP-focused classed. Further, as Newsweek points out:

AP and IB are important because they give average students a chance to experience the trauma of heavy college reading lists and long, analytical college examinations. link

Haha. I like their choice of the word trauma hehe....oh memories... But there are recent trends away from academics. In Asia, many parents who want their kids to more "balanced" lives make sure that their kids grow up in America, Canada, or Australia. In Cupertino, many Caucasian parents pay for their kids to attend a private school (WSJ), safe from the fiercely competitive (predominantly Asian) public schools. Sure, academics can be overdone. But in the case of Evansville, Southern Indiana, "too much academics" is a nice alternative from the standard "don't mess with the teacher, and you'll get a diploma" system that most of the students go through.