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  • Jay Mathews Challenge
  • Test Results
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  • The 71 Acre site
  • Other school capacity needs
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  • The Budget
  • Schools Budget Priorities
  • New High School Costs To-Date
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The Jay Mathews Challenge Index

Tests Taken, but not Passed

Our local school district makes much of its ranking in the Jay Mathews Challenge Index. Just what is this Index? In their own words (in the Washington Post), they state:

The Washington Post Challenge Index measures a public high school's effort to challenge its students. The formula is simple: Divide the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or other college level tests a school gave in one year by the number of seniors who graduated. Tests taken by all students, not just seniors, are counted. Washington-area magnet schools with SAT combined reading and math averages higher than 1300, the highest non-magnet school average in the country, are not included, since they do not have enough average students who need a challenge.

The rating is not a measurement of the overall quality of the school but illuminates one factor that many educators consider important.

The Clarke County Public Schools website has, on its Home Page, the following admission:

74% percentage of all seniors, including those not in AP, calculated by the College Board to have had at least one score of 3 or above on the 5-point test in high school. An IB or combined AP and IB rating was calculated for CCHS by school district officials.

Yes, our district's school officials are calculating their own ranking!!

Check out the High School's true Test Results under Academics.

"Such a degree of learning [should be] given to every member of the society as will enable him to read, to judge and to vote understandingly on what is passing."

--Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805

"We looked at the problems facing America and realized that if we are going to be a competitive nation, we need a far better educated populace than we have now. The American K-12 public education has gone from No. 1 in the world some 30 years ago, to No. 19. We thought, This is bad for the country and bad for our democracy."

--Eli Broad - multi-billionaire, (founder - SunAmerica). Has now established The Broad Residency in Urban Education.