10 City Schools Are Among 1,300 Named Best in Nation

Ten New York City high schools are on a new best-in-show list being published today, a sliver of the more than 1,300 American high schools selected and of the more than 1,200 public high schools in the city.

The Newsweek magazine list is based on a simple formula: the number of college-level tests taken, such as Advanced Placement exams, divided by the total number of graduating seniors.

Twelve New York State schools, including six Long Island schools and three in Westchester, made the top 100, but no New York City schools did.

The author of the list, Jay Mathews, said the city's meager showing is a result both of demographics and attitude — demographics because schools with lower-income students tend not to have as much demand for college-level courses, and attitude because school leaders here have not pushed to supply students with those courses.

"The New York schools, unlike other urban districts, have not yet really bought into the notion that urban kids can do AP, in the way that other urban districts — for instance Houston or D.C. or Miami — have done," Mr. Mathews said.

Three of the city's schools appear on "The Public Elites," a short list of high schools that screen applications in some way and whose students score very high on college-entry exams. The three are Stuyvesant High School in Lower Manhattan; the Bronx High School of Science in the Bronx, and Hunter College High School on the Upper East Side.

Seven other high schools are on the main list. The top school in the city is the relatively new High School for Arts & Business in Queens, which came in at no. 219 and also won the city's top spot on Newsweek's list last year.

The rest of the schools are, from top- to bottom-rated: Midwood High School in Brooklyn, at 707; Benjamin N. Cardozo in Queens, at 761; Edward R. Murrow in Brooklyn, at 1,093; Curtis in Staten Island, at 1,169; Long Island City High School, at 1,183, and DeWitt Clinton in the Bronx, at 1,213.

The schools on the list have not all received top marks from the city and state. Though the High School for Arts & Business received an A on a report card from the city, a grade based mainly on how much improvement the school showed in test-score results, it recently has appeared on the state's failing list. DeWitt Clinton is on the state's failing list and received a C from the city.

The Newsweek list, created by Mr. Mathews, has been criticized in the past for being too simplistic and not taking into account how students do on tests. Partly in response to the Newsweek method, the magazine U.S. News & World Report last year issued its own rankings, based on test-score data.

Mr. Mathews said his list is stronger because it encourages schools to offer advanced courses, even if students will not do well on them.

He said state-written standards, mandated by the federal law No Child Left Behind, are invariably poorer than the standards offered through advanced programs such as Advanced Placement courses and the International Baccalaureate program. Alternatives to such courses, Mr. Mathews said, are "pablum": "not much homework, a few exercises in class, and that does not give them any chance to develop the academic muscles they need to do well in college or even in good jobs," he said.

The president of the city teachers union, Randi Weingarten, said a single measure should never determine the quality of a school, but she praised the idea of using the number of tests taken rather than test scores. "It's a step forward to look at different metrics other than simply state standardized test scores, and I think Newsweek — they should be applauded for that," she said.

The Newsweek article highlights small high schools as making gains, and singles out New York City for encouraging their growth.

One small school in the city — the High School for Arts & Business, created in the 1990s — is on the list, but no new small high schools were selected.