World Is Our Campus The The World Is Our Campus Volume 61, Issue 8
Arcadia High School 180 Campus Drive, Arcadia, CA
April 2014
CARDINAL AND GOLD—Rankings
In this issue:
Photo courtesy of ARCADIANSERVICES.COM
NEWS pg. 2 Car Wash Hiatus: AUSD puts a hold on car wash fundraisers in the district amidst the Californian drought.
Photos courtesy of AHS.AUSD.NET, ARCADIASBEST.COM, ARCADIAPAF.ORG, and JPL.NASA.GOV
A TRADITION OF EXCELLENCE Despite being a school with a relatively high student population, AHS has risen to the challenge and succeeded, ranking among the top 100 schools in California for the third consecutive year in a row. Photo courtesy of VCSTAR.COM
ACADEMICS pg. 18 OSB Places at Nationals: The team finished 2nd in the nation
Photo by STANLEY SHAW
ACADEMICS pg. 20 AVID: A new college readiness program is helping AHS students prepare for education beyond high school. Have a question, comment, or concern about the Pow Wow? Email the Editors-in-Chief at eic.powwow@gmail.com. or find us online at arcadiapowwow.wordpress.com
By MICHELLE HUANG Staff Writer Recently, U.S. News and World Report awarded AHS a Gold Medal Award in its “2014 Best High Schools” national rankings. After analyzing more than 31,200 high schools from all 50 states and ranking 19,411 of them, U.S. News, with this award, declared AHS to be within the top 3% of high schools in the nation, an acknowledgement that has been bestowed upon AHS for three consecutive years. However, what makes this achievement so special is the fact that AHS is able to maintain a high level of academic excellence while having such a high student population. Ranked 89th in the state, AHS is one of only three institutions among the top 100 schools in California that boasts more than 3,000 students. Our closest neighbor, San Marino High School, was also awarded the Gold Medal by U.S. News but has a student population of only about one-third of that of AHS. Meanwhile, our rival, Crescenta Valley High School, is similarly ranked at 82nd in California but has about 700 fewer students than AHS. How is AHS able to compete with other schools despite its large size? In his opinion, our
principal, Dr. Brent Forsee, attributes AHS’ success to the great educational foundation AUSD provides. “AHS has the very best teachers, but this award recognizes the great work our entire school district has put in,” said Dr. Forsee. “It starts even before [students] arrive at AHS, at our three middle schools, where teachers are preparing our students well.” While credit must be given to Arcadia’s fantastic elementary and middle schools for nurturing such bright and intellectually stimulated students, AHS also deserves recognition for training its students in such an academically rigorous environment that positively impacts its students and the school’s ranking in the U.S. News and World Report’s ranking system. U.S. News and World Report implements a three-step ranking system. In the first step, U.S. News looks at each student’s math and reading results on his or her respective state’s high school proficiency test while factoring in the percentage of economically disadvantaged students to determine if the school is performing better than the statistical average. After the first step, the second step is to identify if the least-advantaged students—African Americans, Hispanics, and low income—are also performing better than the state average in math and reading proficiency. Finally, the third step is to judge each school’s college readiness by accounting for the number of students who take Advanced
Placement tests and how well they perform on them. With CST’s being replaced by the new Common Core system and AUSD implementing open access to all AP courses, it will be interesting to observe how AHS’ ranking will be affected if U.S. News continues to use its three-step system. “Ultimately, we want more opportunities for each student who comes onto our campus. The outcome open access has on our rankings is not as important,” said Dr. Forsee when asked about high school ranking and its relationship with the decision to make AP’s open access. Moreover, Arcadia’s success in both academic and extracurricular activities is what makes it such an exciting place to be for students and teachers alike. Arcadia’s excellence goes well beyond mere academics, for it has multiple nationally recognized performing arts programs, academic teams, sports programs, and much more. Thus, it is important to realize that the Gold Medal Award is but one measure of AHS’ greatness. Students, parents, teachers, and other faculty all understand this, and AHS deserves a life-long gold medal for continually instilling a tradition of excellence. mhuang@apachepowwow.com