I transferred in to Earl Wooster High School (Home of the Colts!) on October 31st and that place remained my home for the next 3.5 years. Now, as a kid that had moved around a lot, WHS didn't seem particularly special. Definitely more white-bread than I was used to. I think we had like 15 black kids in the whole school, half of whom were related and 3/4 of whom all played sports. There were some Mexicans and a few Asians--nothing near what the ratios were like in my hometown hood of South Sacramento--but other than that it seemed pretty normal.
We didn't have a ton of "college-bound" kids at WHS; My school was made up of jocks, rednecks and kids from some of the more ghetto areas of Reno. Probably 20% of my graduating class was accepted into a four-year university right out of college. We had a few girls make the Ivy League and one dude get into Stanford, but other than that it was pretty much Tier II State U for everyone else that went to college after graduation. We were much better known for being of the two premiere football factories in the state than we were known for smart kids...that was always the province of the "rich" schools across town, like Reed High or Reno High.
All these years I've been making cracks to my friends and peers in academia that I was a "product of the public school system" and to please not hold it against me. So imagine my surprise when I discovered today that a new study published by NEWSWEEK ranks WHS--my alma mater--within the top 1% of all public schools nationwide.
The study specifically ranks the "Top 1500 Public Schools" and then goes on to identify that these 1500 comprise the top six percent of all public schools in America tested in such a manner. Good ol' Earl Wooster High falls in at #239 overall. Yup, in the whole nation.
Damn. Go figure, huh?
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