School Rankings are Out: The Fight Not Worth Having
For those of you living in elite school districts U.S. News & World Report has issued its 2026-2027 public school rankings. And because your curiosity comes first, here they are:
Now, the reality check. These data often become fodder for a primary custody or school placement war. “Why not the best?” as President Carter once offered. In one sense, parents should consider agreeing to these placements where geography offers the choice or there is an affordable private school option.
But the value of these data is problematic. To perform an annual ranking of nearly 24,000 schools the magazine has to develop an algorithm. The sauce composing that algorithm is not made public. For all we know, the performance of the wrestling team outranks the college enrollment or the number of National Merit Scholars a school has. The rules of evidence mandate that for an expert opinion to be admitted as evidence, there needs to be an understandable scientific foundation for the opinion. The methodology needs to be accepted. Pa. R. E. 702. We have the results but absent some basis to assess why Conestoga High School outranks Wissahickon, the report is hearsay and comes without verifiable methodology.
Having denigrated the rankings, we should add that, like banned books, they are around and secretly consulted. Every school placement expert uses them because you just can’t keep track of hundreds of Pennsylvania and thousands of national schools. He or she won’t admit it, but judges also want to know whether the school choice is between number 200 rank nationally and number 2,000. No judge wants to sentence a kid to a poor performing school, and these rankings seem to “sound” objective.
The problem is that parents become entranced by the rankings. Why choose a placement at Wissahickon (No. 29) when dad lives at No. 13 Conestoga. So, Conestoga is twice the school Wissahickon is, right?
No. These are two outstanding schools. Kids can thrive in either environment. But realize that the judge before whom you will litigate is probably not from a top 50 Pennsylvania school. Many listen to lengthy school comparisons by parties and experts while musing: “I went to a public school here. I got an undergrad and grad school education and the voters in my county deemed me educated enough to wear a robe and decide things.” Yes, there are times when particular skills or child disabilities match the programming of a particular school. But many judges and even the lawyers are watching the case unfold and thinking how much tutoring or specialized supplemental learnings could be bought with the money devoted to trying a custody case. What is also missed is how damaging it can be to kids to see their parents duking it out over what building they learn in. We know the issue is more complicated than that. But, not by a lot.
So, enjoy your stats and hope you rankings are high. But realize that they may never come into evidence and they are far from dispositive in school selection cases.
For those of you living in elite school districts U.S. News & World Report has issued its 2026-2027 public school rankings. And because your curiosity comes first, here they are:
Now, the reality check. These data often become fodder for a primary custody or school placement war. “Why not the best?” as President Carter once offered. In one sense, parents should consider agreeing to these placements where geography offers the choice or there is an affordable private school option.
But the value of these data is problematic. To perform an annual ranking of nearly 24,000 schools the magazine has to develop an algorithm. The sauce composing that algorithm is not made public. For all we know, the performance of the wrestling team outranks the college enrollment or the number of National Merit Scholars a school has. The rules of evidence mandate that for an expert opinion to be admitted as evidence, there needs to be an understandable scientific foundation for the opinion. The methodology needs to be accepted. Pa. R. E. 702. We have the results but absent some basis to assess why Conestoga High School outranks Wissahickon, the report is hearsay and comes without verifiable methodology.
Having denigrated the rankings, we should add that, like banned books, they are around and secretly consulted. Every school placement expert uses them because you just can’t keep track of hundreds of Pennsylvania and thousands of national schools. He or she won’t admit it, but judges also want to know whether the school choice is between number 200 rank nationally and number 2,000. No judge wants to sentence a kid to a poor performing school, and these rankings seem to “sound” objective.
The problem is that parents become entranced by the rankings. Why choose a placement at Wissahickon (No. 29) when dad lives at No. 13 Conestoga. So, Conestoga is twice the school Wissahickon is, right?
No. These are two outstanding schools. Kids can thrive in either environment. But realize that the judge before whom you will litigate is probably not from a top 50 Pennsylvania school. Many listen to lengthy school comparisons by parties and experts while musing: “I went to a public school here. I got an undergrad and grad school education and the voters in my county deemed me educated enough to wear a robe and decide things.” Yes, there are times when particular skills or child disabilities match the programming of a particular school. But many judges and even the lawyers are watching the case unfold and thinking how much tutoring or specialized supplemental learnings could be bought with the money devoted to trying a custody case. What is also missed is how damaging it can be to kids to see their parents duking it out over what building they learn in. We know the issue is more complicated than that. But, not by a lot.
So, enjoy your stats and hope your rankings are high. But realize that they may never come into evidence and they are far from dispositive in school selection cases.