Rickover

The naval academy at Senn High School, named Rickover Naval Academy, is set to open on September 6. A small newspaper named Substance has published an interesting article on this. A choice excerpt:

On hearing that the military school is to be named the “Rickover” Naval Academy, a Senn teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, quipped: “That about sums up how we feel about it… if you change the first two letters.” For a few days in early May, a sign proclaiming the “Rickover Academy” stood in front of Senn, but nightly editing of the name prompted school officials to remove the sign.

In a previous entry, I had mentioned that there would be a segment on Senn on The NewsHour, to air in May. It turns out this didn't happen, but there was still an interesting feature on aggressive tactics used by military recruiters.

Chicago Public Schools has released test results for its high schools ('03-'04 results -- as of Aug. 28, the CPS web page incorrectly says 2002). Based on these numbers, it's hard to make a case that military academies are good schools. The column to look at is the percentage of students meeting or exceeding PSAE Composite standards. For some selective enrollment schools, over 90% of students meet standards. But for the three military academies in the list, we have Phoenix at 5.3%, Carver at 9.9%, and Chicago Military Academy at 41%. None of them are all that spectacular, and Chicago Military Academy is the only one that is somewhat successful. The Phoenix result, one of the worst in the city, is particularly poor when you consider that a mere 69% of its students are low income, and there is normally a strong correlation between poverty and poor performance.