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SUMMIT PREP NAMED #76 ON
NEWSWEEK’S TOP PUBLIC SCHOOLS RANKING
Summit Preparatory High School in
Redwood City has been named number 76 in Newsweek’s survey of the country’s top
public high schools. That puts the
six-year-old charter high school in the top 0.25 percent of the nation’s public
high schools. Using the “Equity and Excellence” rankings that consider how many
students take and pass AP exams,
Summit ranks 73rd among the nation’s nearly 23,000 public schools. This placed Summit 9th in California,
trailing only Pacific Collegiate Charter in Santa Cruz in the Bay Area.
The Newsweek rankings are based on
the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge
tests taken by all the students at a public school divided by the number of
graduating seniors, according to Newsweek, which released the rankings on June 14.
The latest rankings are for 2009.
Summit Prep’s students take and
pass Advanced Placement tests at a pace that puts Summit near the top of the
“Equity and Excellence” rankings. That index highlights the schools that have
the highest percentage of students taking and passing AP exams. In most large
public high schools, roughly a quarter of the students – or fewer – take AP
courses and exams. At Summit, every junior and senior takes an AP exam and last
year, 75 percent of Summit students passed an exam with a score of three or
higher. Summit students take two or three AP courses as juniors and four or
five AP courses senior year. They are only required to take one AP exam each
year, although some students take more. Summit doesn’t encourage all students
to take more AP exams because teachers don’t want to overwork the students and the
cost to the school is prohibitive. Summit provides AP exams free of charge to
students of low family incomes, about 38% of the student population.
“We believe that every student can
achieve at the highest academic level if given the opportunity and the right
support,” says Summit Prep executive director Todd Dickson. “It’s exciting to
watch our students successfully rise to the challenge of college level
coursework, especially considering that about 75 percent of our students would
not be in the AP track at a traditional comprehensive high school.”
Many of the top-performing high
schools in the Newsweek poll have demanding entrance criteria or are in
affluent areas. Students at Summit are selected by lottery every spring and
many will be the first in their families to attend college. Among those schools
that don’t have entrance requirements and have at least a quarter of students
receiving free or reduced lunches, Summit Prep ranks in the top 20 in the
nation on the Equity and Excellence Newsweek measure, and first in
California.
At
Summit, 38 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.
About 47 percent of Summit students have parents who did not attend college.
“We’re really doing things that
very few high schools in the country are doing and that’s exciting,” Dickson
says.
Only 8 California high schools
ranked above Summit, including Pacific Collegiate in Santa Cruz at 19. This puts Summit ahead of such local
powerhouses as Mission High School in San Jose, Palo Alto High School, and Gunn
High School.
Summit’s goal is to have every
student attend a four-year college or university. Over the past three years, 96
percent of the school’s graduates have been accepted to four-year colleges.
About 44 percent of Summit’s
students come from Redwood City, while a few come from more affluent
communities, such as Portola Valley, Atherton and Woodside. Students come to
Summit from 45 different middle schools, stretching from Pacifica to San Jose.
Some of the more distant students joined Summit in the days when the freshman
classes didn’t fill up with district students. This year, 476 students applied
for the 108 spots in the 2010 freshman class.
High
school students who get a three or better on AP exams may qualify for college
credit, which can save them money and time when they get to college. For the
students who take AP exams and don’t pass, there’s still a benefit, Dickson
says. “There’s research that shows that even if a student gets a one or a two
on an AP exam, they’re much more likely to be successful and graduate from a
four year college, just by being exposed to higher level thinking and a more
rigorous curriculum,” he says. “For Hispanic students, they have about a 22
percent better chance of graduating from college if they pass an AP exam. For
Hispanic students who don’t pass, they still have an 18 percent better chance
of being successful in college.”
Critics have charged that Summit’s
success relies on the school somehow admitting only the most prepared students,
but Dickson says California Star Testing data from middle schools shows that
Summit students start at the same preparation levels as students at the large
public high schools in the area. Dickson believes it’s the in-depth, very
focused education they get that makes the difference – along with the creative,
hard-working teachers. For example, during the school year, Summit students
take only five classes: English, Math, Science, History and Spanish. There are
no electives during the school year. (Instead, students take a month-long
elective – with no other academics – in January and late May and early June.
Those times were chosen because research shows that those months are when
students’ energy and academic accomplishments flag. During the so-called “Intersession,”
students who have fallen behind get extra academic coaching in addition to
their elective.)
Dickson says the extra time with
teachers – at “office hours” after school, on field trips and during intersession
– helps kids keep up with the challenging curriculum. By senior year, students
are taking AP Environmental Science and AP Calculus or Statistics. Nearly all
of Summit’s teachers come from the Stanford School of Education, Harvard
University or Columbia Teachers College and are experts at differentiation –
making the same material interesting and accessible to students of many
different ability levels.
“Kids want to learn. You just have
to figure out ways to motivate them,” Dickson says. “Summit teachers say,
“There’s no teaching without learning.” That means the adults take
responsibility. Instead of setting up a system to support teaching, Summit
focuses completely on supporting student learning. We’re all working together –
teachers and students – to make it happen.”
Summit gives intensive support to
students who need it, including extra help from teachers every day of the week,
extra tutoring and support during the elective intersession and, when needed,
summer school. Summer school has not been required in recent years at Summit,
but Dickson is organizing an academic boot camp for Summit students who need
extra help before sophomore and junior year.
“We’re starting a summer program,
as well as a supplemental academic intersession course, this year for freshmen
before 10th grade for kids that need more support in math and
English. We’ll do it again between 10th and 11th grade.
Our goal is to give them enough support to be ready (for AP courses) by junior
year,” Dickson says. “There’s no real magic to do that, other than to give them
lots of extra time, give them great teachers and put them in a system that
makes it very difficult for them to fail.”
Dickson puts the credit for Summit
students’ impressive results on the teachers’ shoulders.
“They’re really willing to do whatever it takes to make sure
kids are successful,” he says. “I think they’re successful at Summit because of
the structures here and how the school allows them to be great teachers. They
only teach one course. They teach it only four times a day, so they have two
periods to plan. They have 40 days of professional development to plan courses
… Most teachers around the country get two to four days.”
The teachers are constantly working
to improve themselves, too. During Intersession, when students are taking
electives taught by other teachers, Summit teachers study best practices from
other schools, teach each other new techniques and focus on areas where they
need to improve. For example, during the last Intersession, teachers spent two
days learning how to help students who aren’t fluent in English. About 18
percent of Summit’s freshmen are designated English language learners.
For Summit students, especially
those who come from under-performing middle schools, their years at Summit are
a revelation, Dickson says. “I think they feel very proud by the time they are
seniors and graduating,” he says. “Many of their friends at other schools have
dropped out of high school or are taking minimal course loads in their senior
year and these Summit students are taking AP Environmental Science and AP
Statistics. They’re really proud that they’re able to be academic scholars.”
This is Summit’s second year in the
Newsweek rankings, coming in at #118 last year.
“We’re thrilled to be included,”
Dickson said. “While no single measurement can evaluate the quality of a
school, we believe that the Equity and Excellence measure, in particular, is a
good reflection of how well a school challenges all of its students.”
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