Vt. HS Learns Tough Math Lesson

Vermont’s Montpelier High School was bursting with pride over its fifth-place ranking on US World & News Report’s top-100 schools list, until—whoops!— the magazine said the school wasn’t even in the top 100. “We were up there among all these schools for the talented and gifted,” said one senior. “It was funny that such a national thing could be messed up so badly.”

The accurate rankings, based on a variety of test scores crunched by Standard & Poor's, put Montpelier High in the top 500. “It's particularly embarrassing that we're in the business of judging people based on their math scores, and we got our math wrong,” said the magazine’s editor. One unsurprised sophomore told the AP, “I don’t really see us as one of the most amazing schools ever.” (More high school stories.)