Who Moved Up, Who Moved Down: RI’s Top High Schools 2012
Monday, May 14, 2012
Rhode Island’s suburban high schools continued to outperform the urban schools in GoLocalProv’s annual top high school rankings, with East Greenwich, Narragansett, Exeter-West Greenwich, South Kingstown and Barrington again finishing in the top five.
But that doesn’t mean the list remained entirely the same.
Chariho Regional (#6), Westerly (#7) and Portsmouth (#8) were among the top schools that saw improvements while Pawtucket’s Jacqueline M. Walsh School for the Performing and Visual Arts jumped from #31 on the 2011 list to #20 this year.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTAt the same time, Toll Gate, a top ten finisher in 2011, dropped ten spots to #18 and Davies Career & Technical fell to #27, down from #14 a year ago.
Chariho’s Huge Jump
In 2011, Chariho Regional ranked #17 thanks to impressive reading proficiency numbers but underwhelming performances in both math and writing. This year, math and writing improved significantly and SAT scores went up in all three sections, helping the school improve all the way to #6 on the list.
Beacon Charter Continues to Improve
Two years after ranking in the bottom ten in GoLocalProv’s first annual rankings, Beacon Charter now finds itself just outside of the top 30 thanks to another increase in math proficiency. As it stands now, 58 percent of students are proficient in math, a nine percent increase from 2011. By comparison, 54 percent of students at Narragansett and Exeter-West Greenwich (which rank #2 and #3, respectively) are proficient in math.
Walsh a Winner
While Pawtucket has the unfortunate distinction of having both of its traditional high schools being labeled among the state’s persistently lowest-achieving schools, the Walsh School for the Arts is quickly gaining notoriety for its improvements.
Walsh, which will send students to RISD, Brandeis and Fordham next year, is the only school in the state have 100 percent proficiency in reading and it ranks in the top five in the state for writing proficiency. Math proficiency remains a serious problem, as the school’s proficiency numbers dropped by 12 points down to 25 percent.
Toll Gate’s Drop
While several top ten schools in 2011 saw slight decreases, Toll Gate’s setback was significant. The school lost ground in proficiency in reading, math and writing, and the #18 ranking reflects those losses. The largest drop came in writing, where proficiency fell from 68 percent in 2011 down 54 percent in 2012.
For a printable version of RI's Top High Schools 2012, with the full chart of rankings and summaries of key articles, Download PDF
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