Research into the Comparision of Gifted Schools Nationally

As you may know, I've been doing a project regarding diversity at Pine View. The key part of my project to increase diversity would be to modify the enrollment system in a way where every child is given an equal chance to apply. This means finding the key point in the current application process which results in a smaller pool of African American students passing than any other ethnicity. An article I read pointed out that in the current system at Pine View, only 1 in 50 black students pass compared to an average of 1 in 7 white students. This is what raised my doubt in the current system and it is what I believe may attribute to the diversification of Pine View if fixed correctly.

Another key realization I made was the fact that Pine View is not nearly the only school in the US who has this problem. Several of the nation's top filtered or "gifted" schools have issues with diversity. This is valuable information because being able to pinpoint common ground among all these schools would be crucial to identifying the root of the problem in our own community and how to solve it.

I also created a diversity scoring tool which compares the demographic percentages of minority groups in a school and compares them to the county. The closer the demographics of the school are to the county in the minority groups, the better the diversity score is. The score ranges between 0-100, however neither 0 nor 100 will ever truly be reached. Those numbers identify the ideal diversity where the demographics exactly match that of the county to the person. I will further explain the algorithm of this calculator in another article.

However this calculator is important in the process I took in organizing the list I created of the top 50 high schools in the nation, with a similar application process as Pine View, according to US News being ranked by my diversity grader. I have posted the chart below:

School Name	District/County of School	Ranking	US News Ranking	Diversity Score
Young Women's Preparatory Academy	Miami-Dade County Public Schools	1	52	96.60
Jericho Senior High School	Jericho Union Free School District	2	67	96.10
School Without Walls High School	District Of Columbia Public Schools	3	84	93.20
Whitney High School	ABC Unified School District	4	14	92.20
Design and Architecture Senior High	Miami-Dade County Public Schools	5	22	89.60
Hawthorne Math and Science Academy	Hawthorne School District	6	66	88.00
University High School (Tolleson)	Tolleson Union High School District	7	21	87.90
Lowell High School	San Francisco Unified School District	8	59	87.10
Preuss School UCSD	San Diego Unified School District	9	54	82.10
Rye High School	Rye City School District	10	90	80.90
School of Science and Engineering	Dallas Independent School District	11	9	79.90
International Studies Preparatory Academy	Miami-Dade County Public Schools	12	30	78.60
International School	Bellevue School District	13	41	78.60
DSST: Stapleton High School	Denver Public Schools	14	97	76.60
Gilbert Classical Academy High School	Gilbert Unified District	15	29	70.80
Suncoast Community High School	School District of Palm Beach County	16	53	70.50
Booker T. Washington SPVA	Dallas Independent School District	17	92	66.80
Peak to Peak CHARTER School	Boulder Valley School District	18	33	63.90
Hume Fogg Magnet High School	Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools	19	58	63.60
University High School(Tucson)	Tucson Unified District	20	15	63.50
Walnut Hills High School	Cincinnati Public Schools	21	47	63.30
Dr. Ronald E McNair High School	Jersey City Public Schools	22	49	63.30
Alexander W. Dreyfoos Junior School of the Arts	School District of Palm Beach County	23	78	62.50
Benjamin Franklin High School	New Orleans Public Schools	24	70	62.10
Philip J. Weaver Ed Center	Guilford County Schools	25	39	61.10
Mission San Jose High	Fremont Unified	26	76	61.00
Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology	Gwinnett County	27	34	60.00
IDEA Frontier College Preparatory	IDEA Public Schools	28	55	60.00
Walter Payton College Preparatory High School	Chicago Public Schools	29	64	60.00
Edgewood Jr/Sr High School	Brevard Public Schools	30	50	59.70
Westshore Junior/Senior High School	Brevard Public Schools	31	31	59.00
Tesla STEM High School	Lake Washington School District	32	28	57.30
Carnegie Vanguard High School	Houston Independent School District	33	8	56.90
Northside College Preparatory High School	Chicago Public Schools	34	40	54.50
DeBakey High School for Health Professions	Houston Independent School District	35	18	53.70
Stanton College Preparatory School	Duval County Public Schools	36	36	53.10
School for the Talented and the Gifted	Dallas Independent School District	37	4	49.80
International Community School	Lake Washington School District	38	80	49.70
Julia R. Masterman Secondary School	School District of Philadelphia	39	51	48.00
Pine View School	Sarasota County Schools	40	13	45.60
Loveless Academic Magnet Program High School	Montgomery County	41	57	43.60
Boston Latin School	Boston Public Schools	42	42	41.80
Central Magnet School	Rutherford County	43	37	40.30
Oxford Academy	Anaheim Union High	44	12	36.80
Early College at Guilford	Guilford County Schools	45	62	27.80
Thomas Jefferson School for Science and Technology	Fairfax County Public Schools	46	6	27.20
Liberal Arts and Science Academy	Austin Independent School District	47	27	23.90
Academic Magnet High School	Charleston County School District	48	11	20.70
Bronx High School of Science	New York City Public Schools-District 10	49	46	17.40
High Technology High School	Monmouth County Vocational School District	50	16	6.50

*Note: The scores in this table should be only taken to 2 significant figures and are only rough estimates using diversity data from Niche.com

Although several of the schools on this list have a ranking on US News well above the top 50, the reason for this is that I had to actually take the top 100 high schools and identify 50 that had an application process similar to that of Pine View. This also led to the decision of removing all the New York City schools whose application process for their schools is very different from the Pine View. I will also attach the original document of the scores that all the top 100 got that I calculated with the scorer.

My plan after this is to separately explore the processes in applying to each of these schools much more thoroughly. Then, by comparing them al to one another, I will hopefully be able to find something that each of them share. This process will be for another article however. I encourage you to look out for it, because it will be critical in taking the next step towards a more diverse future for Pine View and possibly other schools facing the same problem around the nation.

Link to document of Top 100 ranked using diversity calculator:
https://1drv.ms/x/s!AuU8iPdfWb_dmXrgH7BY4POaWTkI

*Note: Many charter schools in the top 100 were not able to be scored due to not being able to find diversity data of their surrounding counties

-VCK