Newsweek ranked Evanston Township High School among the nation’s top 500 high schools this year, but ETHS officials said the magazine’s survey does not give the school enough credit for offering Advanced Placement classes or encouraging minorities to take them.

In Newsweek’s May 16 issue, ETHS is ranked number 429 out of 1,000 American high schools.

Evanston parents and educators criticized the formula the magazine uses to judge high schools.

Newsweek and Washington Post columnist Jay Matthews evaluated schools by dividing the number of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate tests taken by juniors and seniors in 2004 at a high school by the number of graduating seniors in 2004. The resulting number is called the “Challenge Index.” To maintain a focus on “average” students, the survey omits schools with entrance exams and strict entrance requirements.

“You need to develop a more complex formula that would incorporate more factors such as diversity (and) family income,” said Judith Levinson, ETHS’ director of research, evaluation and assessment.

She also said improving test scores and increasing test participation rates should help schools move up in the rankings.

ETHS is continuing to increase the number of AP tests offered and the number of students taking them, Levinson said. The school gives its school board a yearly report on available AP classes and tests and actively monitors who takes AP tests to encourage more minority students enroll in AP classes, she said.

ETHS does not offer IB tests, so its ranking depends solely on the number of AP tests taken, she added.

ETHS spokeswoman Kathy Miehls said the formula arbitrarily awards low rankings to schools with large graduating classes, such as ETHS’s 2004 graduating class of 705.

“(This) seems (to be) a ridiculous way to do it because it hurts big schools,” Miehls said. “Let the (test) scores speak for themselves.”

But Matthews defended his criteria in a May 8 posting on the Newsweek Web site.

“I think that this is the most important quantitative measure one can make of a high school,” Matthews wrote, “and I think one of the strengths of this list is the narrowness of my criteria.”

In the spring of 2004, 553 ETHS juniors and seniors — 18.1 percent of the student body — took 1,100 AP exams, Miehls said. This year’s senior class has 729 students.

“I think we are as complete as we can be for the size of the school,” said ETHS fine arts teacher Richard Bowers.

ETHS school board member Margaret Lurie agreed with Bowers.

“I think we offer a tremendous number of (AP courses),” she said. “We have more and more minorities taking them.”

Newsweek ranked the high school 175 in 2003, using statistics from the 2001-02 school year. Levinson said she wasn’t sure why the school dropped in the rankings because ETHS is offering at least as many AP classes as it has in previous years. She also said a greater number of students take AP tests each year. The percentage of students taking AP tests increased to 18.1 percent in 2004 from 11.2 percent in 1995, she said.

ETHS’ ranking might have dropped because more schools are competing for the Newsweek rankings each year, Levinson said.

Reach Lensay Abadula at [email protected].