Photo by rjs1322

Earlier this week, Newsweek released its 2010 “America’s Best High Schools” list, designed in part by the Washington Post’s Jay Mathews. This year, two D.C. public high schools made the top 100 — Bell Multicultural High School (#37) and Woodrow Wilson High School (#100) — along with a smattering of campuses in Maryland and NoVa.

It’s great to see Bell and Wilson — two DCPS schools that really are among the top-performing and most innovative high schools in the District — receive some national attention. But to call a place like Bell, which was labeled a “dropout factory” in a 2008 national study, one of America’s best high schools? You’ve got to be kidding.

Here’s how Newsweek arrives at its rankings: Take the total number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge (AICE) tests given at a school each year, then divide by the number of graduating seniors. That’s it. Newsweek doesn’t even adjust for whether the students pass the exams. Bell does well under these metrics because Bell requires all its upperclassmen to take at least one AP test every spring. Plus, Bell has an extremely small graduating class.

DCist has written before about why the Newsweek list is problematic. And a 2006 report by Education Sector found that many campuses included on the list fail to meet “a reasonable definition of a good high school.”