Vt. HS Learns Tough Math Lesson

S&P miscalculates, leading to goof in US News national rankings
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 11, 2007 2:25 PM CST
Vt. HS Learns Tough Math Lesson
Montpelier High School is seen in Montpelier, Vt., Monday, Dec. 10, 2007. Standard & Poor's, which analyzed data for U.S. News & World Report's ranking of America's top 100 schools, made a mistake in calculating the score for Montpelier High School and erroneously ranked it the nation's fifth-best public...   (Associated Press)

Vermont’s Montpelier High School was bursting with pride over its fifth-place ranking on US World & News Report’s top-100 schools list, until—whoops!— the magazine said the school wasn’t even in the top 100. “We were up there among all these schools for the talented and gifted,” said one senior. “It was funny that such a national thing could be messed up so badly.”

The accurate rankings, based on a variety of test scores crunched by Standard & Poor's, put Montpelier High in the top 500. “It's particularly embarrassing that we're in the business of judging people based on their math scores, and we got our math wrong,” said the magazine’s editor. One unsurprised sophomore told the AP, “I don’t really see us as one of the most amazing schools ever.” (More high school stories.)

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