Wells High School has been placed the highest of the York County schools, being ranked by the organization as third out of 122 included in the list. York High School was ranked seventh, and Bonny Eagle High School in Standish the 18th best in the state.
Paul Penna, superintendent of Maine School Administrative District 6, which encompasses Buxton, Hollis, Standish, Limington, and Frye Island — and of which Bonny Eagle is a part — was elated by the news on Thursday.
“We’re ecstatic,” Penna said by telephone on Thursday. “We work really hard. It’s a great school; it’s a great community. … It’s nice to know that, somewhere along the line, somebody picked up on the fact how well our students do and how good our teachers are.”
U.S. News and World Report said it ranked schools based on their overall performance, performance of disadvantaged students and graduation rates.
The agency says the first step in ranking is to determine whether each school’s students were performing better than statistically expected for students in that state. The 10 percent of schools with the highest absolute performance on their state’s reading and math assessment tests automatically passed the first step.
The second step in assessment determines whether a high school’s disadvantaged students – which they label as black, Hispanic and low-income – performed at or better than the state average for the least-advantaged students.
Lastly, schools must have at least a 75 percent graduation rate or higher.
The school, classified by U.S. News as “distant rural,” boasts a 79 percent graduation rate and a large portion of students taking Advanced Placement courses, despite 38 percent of students being classified as “economically disabled.”
“You can help students to rise above. In spite of demographics, they can perform well,” Penna said. “That doesn’t have to be a factor of their ability to perform.”
Bonny Eagle was also awarded a bronze medal of national recognition. Wells High School was given a silver medal, boasting a 98 percent graduation rate.
But some school districts were left out of the statewide rankings, including Regional School Unit 21, which encompasses Kennebunk, Kennebunkport and Arundel — and their officials are speaking out.
Superintendent Katie Hawes said in a letter to parents and students on April 28 that Kennebunk High School was left out of the list due to inaccurate data used to categorize schools.
“The data that was used to rank Kennebunk High School is inaccurate for the third year in a row,” Hawes claimed, saying the district talked with U.S. News Report, the Maine Department of Education and the National Center for Educational Statistics last year in hopes the information would be corrected.
She said the school would have ranked sixth in the state last year.
“The data for this year remain flawed and KHS was once again not among the schools ranked,” she said.
Hawes claimed several reasons are to blame, including the inclusion of about 130 students from Arundel who attend other schools outside the district.
“Our ranking reflects 290 students tested and only 162 of those students attend KHS,” she said.
Hawes also said data used in the calculation was from the 2015-2016 school year, a year in which Maine used the Smarter Balance Assessment as the state proficiency test, in which students from Kennebunk scored particularly low in mathematics proficiency.
In addition, she said, the number of students taking Advanced Placement courses was incorrect, based on the wrong number of students used in calculation. She said the data in the latest report indicates that only 36 percent of KHS students have taken at least one AP class; the number should be 63 percent, she said.
“And, if you consider the number of students who take at least one AP, (International Baccalaureate), or college class while at KHS, the number rises to over 70 percent,” she wrote. “As a district, we take this flawed ranking very seriously and understand the impact that it has on our students.
“In addition to continued advocacy on this issue, we intend to include this information on our school profile forms sent to college admissions officers,” she said.
— Staff Writer Alan Bennett can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 329 or abennett@journaltribune.com.
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