By Kathianne Boniello
Benjamin Cardozo High School in Bayside ranked as one of the best in New York City and the nation out of a field of nearly 500 public schools, according to a survey in Newsweek magazine this week.
Cardozo was one of only five high schools in the city and the only one in Queens to place in the survey of 472 high schools around the country, which looked at student access to Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams- college-level programs and tests given in a wide variety of subjects.
Of the five city schools to make the list, Cardozo, which ranked at No. 221, came in second only to Brooklyn's Midwood High School, at No. 166. The other city schools on the list included the High School for Environmental Studies in Manhattan and Susan E. Wagner High School and Port Richmond High School, both in Staten Island.
Rick Hallman, principal of Cardozo, said the ranking was “excellent.”
“We do call ourselves the best neighborhood school in the city,” he said.
Hallman said all of the school's 4,200 students are zoned for Cardozo and are not accepted through screened academic or talent-based programs.
Cardozo also made the Newsweek list last year, and while its ranking slipped from No. 95 in 1999 to No. 221 this year, Hallman said “we'll take it.”
The school also has had numerous finalists and semi-finalists in the prestigious Westinghouse science competition, including three students in this year's Intel contest. Intel is the sponsor for what used to be known as the Westinghouse competition.
High schools that select more than half of their students based on entrance exams or other academic qualifications, such as Townsend Harris in Flushing, Stuyvesant in Manhattan and Bronx Science, were excluded from the list.
Jay Mathews, the Washington Post reporter who compiled the Newsweek list, said in a telephone interview that the survey tried to recognize schools that stimulated marginal students.
“The purpose was to identify those schools that are challenging marginal students,” he said. “To me it didn't make sense to include schools that are constructed in such a way that they only take the cream of the crop.”
Mathews added that he would like the survey to be called “the nation's most challenging schools.”
Hallman said the ranking helped justify Cardozo's tough academic standards.
“It reinforces what we feel are the kind of standards that we hold our students to,” he said. “We tell new parents coming in that there are state standards, and Cardozo standards are sometimes higher.”
The school gave 723 students AP tests last spring in a wide variety of subjects, Hallman said, such as biology, American history, computer science, microeconomics and macroeconomics, psychology, statistics, and chemistry, to name a few.
“AP courses have become almost required for admission to some of the more rigorous colleges,” he said.
Advanced Placement tests also serve as challenges for teachers, Hallman said.
“It keeps teachers on their toes,” he said. “It's really important to have these advanced placement courses – it makes everyone work harder.”
