Bellevue, Seattle schools at the head of the class

NEWSWEEK magazine's annual rankings of American public high schools invariably draws fire that shouldn't overshadow the effort's good news.

Newsweek ranks the schools by the percentage of their graduating seniors who take Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge classes and the accompanying tests.

This year, five Bellevue schools made the magazine's list for the fifth year in a row. Even better, for the first time those schools were in the top 100 of schools nationwide.

Credit Bellevue and two Seattle high schools, Ingraham and Garfield, for working hard to broaden access to advanced classes.

Those who didn't make the list aren't on the B team. But they haven't reached a point where a substantial percentage of their student body is tackling advanced coursework. It is an important distinction.

Advanced courses in high school mirror introductory college-level courses. Challenging reading lists and analytical discussions prepare students for the academic rigor of college.

Students have a better chance of college success if they've taken advanced courses in high school. How well students do on the tests isn't as important as the knowledge and preparation they acquire through exposure in the classroom.

Studies, including ones done by the U.S. Department of Education, prove the strategy works. Even students who took such courses but scored low on the end exam tended to do better than students who didn't take the courses.

Advanced classes are a measurement, much like test scores or poverty rates, that should not be used to define an entire school. But they point to the characteristics that make a school work, or not work. Newsweek has worked to make its measurement as balanced as possible by counting the kids who take an AP or IB test rather than just those who pass the tests. This thwarts efforts by high schools to keep passage rates artificially high by allowing only top students to take the courses.

Not all students will succeed, but kudos to those schools that encourage all students to try.