by Liz Willen

As a veteran of both middle school and high school tours (not to mention the many college tours I’ve been on as an education journalist), I'm getting really sick of the will-my-child-get-in question. It's become as annoying as the incessant "are we there yet?" mantra from the back seat of the car.

Of course, in the highly competitive world we inhabit, it's only natural to freak out a bit about high-school admission, particularly when criteria are so vague.

Top New York City high schools that don't require the specialized high school exam – schools like Baruch College Campus High School and Lab School for Collaborative Studies, for example – might ask for an average of 85 and above and 3s or 4s on the seventh-grade math and ELA exams. Since thousands of students meet these requirements, the number of applicants far exceeds the spaces. No wonder parents and kids are anxious about who will make the cut.

In the interest of holding public high schools and educators accountable and making sure that all high schools – not just the most coveted ones – are performing, I'm going to suggest moving the conversation toward judging and evaluating schools. In that contest, it's important to know that New York's not alone. Most U.S. high schools aren't doing so well.

Judy Codding, president of America's Choice, provided a host of useful questions and some data about U.S. high schools at a conference for journalists on high school reform. (In the interest of full disclosure, I helped run it, for the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media.)

Codding presented some frightening numbers about the state of U.S. high schools. For example:

• Two out of 10 students who leave middle school are not ready for a rigorous high school core curriculum

• Teachers indicate that they spend a quarter to a third of their time each year re-teaching what should have been learned in earlier grades

• Approximately 1.2 million students who enter ninth grade fail to graduate four years later

• While nationally 70% of students graduate from high school on time, just over half of African-American and Hispanic students meet that goal (NB: In New York City, the numbers for boys of color are even lower. -hz)

• Three out of four high school graduates who take a core curriculum are not prepared for entry-level college courses

• Nearly a third students entering post-secondary education need remedial courses in one or more subjects

Codding, who has served as a high school principal in communities from Pasadena, California to Scarsdale, New York, suggests asking for statistics and data on every tour. Some other tips:

• Ask how prepared the incoming ninth-graders are and what the school is doing to make sure they get prepared.

• Ask about the teachers. Are most of them brand new? Did the principal get a say in who he or she hired? How are they assigned to classes? Do the strongest teachers teach the brightest kids? Who works with the school's most challenging population?

• Ask how student performance is tracked, and what policies and practices either need to be put in place or removed to improve student performance?

• Ask about the school's four-year graduation rate (this information is also posted on the Insideschools' profiles in the gray box with other helpful school statistics).

Sheer numbers dictate that not all of our children will be accepted into the top tier schools. Let's push instead to improve the options within all city high schools. One way to do that is by visiting a larger variety of schools and asking lots of questions – and holding educators accountable for the answers.