Clover Park School District announcement.
LAKEWOOD, Wash. — Harrison Preparatory School and Lakes High School are ranked among the region’s best public high schools according to a recent ranking from U.S. News and World Report.
Harrison Prep is the top ranked high school in Pierce County and ranked eighth in Washington state and No. 586 out of nearly 24,000 public high schools across the country. Lakes High School is the 12th ranked high school in Pierce County.
“I am incredibly proud of the efforts of our secondary schools,” said Superintendent Ron Banner. “Our students and school staff show passion and dedication for education every day. Regardless of where a school falls in the rankings, we continue to work on improving our systems to support student achievement over time.”
U.S. News and World Report completes this ranking annually to identify schools that, in the opinion of the evaluators, are best preparing students for college and careers.
The rankings were determined by six key indicators: college readiness (30%), college curriculum breadth (10%), state assessment proficiency (20%), state assessment performance (20%), underserved student performance (10%) and graduation rate (10%).
You can view the complete rankings here.
Congratulations to Harrison Prep and Lakes High Schools for being cited in this article. However I have some issues with the numbers as compared to the OSPI Report Card and School Digger sites that show different data. Don’t pat yourself on the back so quickly until you look at the CPSD’s performance across the board.
https://www.schooldigger.com/go/WA/district/01410/search.aspx
For instance Harrison is NOT #8 in the State for high schools. Actually it is #76 out of 455 state high schools: commendable but at the 83.3 percentile. Similarly Lakes is #210 out of 455 for a 55.8 percentile: middle of the pack. Missing is Clover Park High School which comes in at #428 out of 455 for a 5.9%! This is nothing to brag about: very bottom of all state high schools.
This is but the tip of the iceberg of academic competence. Take a look at Lochburn Middle School: #506 out of 529 state middle schools for 4.3 percentile. Almost unbelievably check out Tyee Elementary School at 1091 out of 1107 state elementary schools for 1.4 percentile……98.6 percent of state elementary schools are ranked superior to Tyee Elementary! That is a disgrace.
There are many other schools in the District that are in serious trouble academically: high school, middle schools and elementary schools. Unless these schools improve you will find that the problem merely steps up a grade every year until elementary students today become the middle and high schoolers over the next decade and bring with them the same academic failings we see in the District today.
This is a serious problem that Board and administration must take immediate action to forestall. It’s nice to publish congratulatory articles for a couple of “success” stories. How about the District be transparent and address its failing schools and the District’s failure to have all of its schools as successes?