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Benjamin Franklin High School (New Orleans, Louisiana)

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I want to continue in the process of improving this article to the long-term goal of featured status. I have tried to base it on the three core content policies, although it's not entirely perfect: mainly verifiability in the notable alumni section, I believe the rest of the article is well-cited. It is also modeled in many ways after Stuyvesant High School, Baltimore City College, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Article guidelines. I have just recently tried to balance out the academic reputation of the school with significant coverage of its main criticism in Accusations of bias in admissions.

Thanks, --Jh12 (talk) 05:53, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]


comments by Uncia (talk · contribs)

This is a well-sourced article and presents a good balance of information about the school. The weak areas are a number of confusing sentences and too much bragging. Specifics:

  • The lede is weak, as it does not give a good summary of the article, and does include some needless detail such as the cross streets and a list of awards and recognitions received by the school.
  • History - "Dr. Thomas Tews (Principal, 1988–2001) believed the school was founded as part of a nationwide push for elite science and math academies, prompted by the launching that year of Sputnik by the Soviet Union,[9] although the school actually opened before the launch of the satellite." This is not very clear - does it mean that Tews was mistaken? If so, do we need to bring this up?
  • I've hesitated to remove the statement because Dr. Tews was the longest serving principal of the school and I believe his opinion is very accurate in regards to the current focus of the school: math and science. It is also based on reliable sources. But according to recent posts on the talk page and the Time magazine reference, it appears that the school may not have been based on math and science when it was originally founded so I will probably have to remove the statement at some point. I also felt it was critically important to establish the circumstances of the school's founding. --Jh12 (talk) 04:06, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • History - "Ben Franklin suffered several feet of flood damage " - this is not very clear; probably it means "it was damaged by several feet of flood waters". Damage is usually not measured in feet.
  • History - "School administration, faculty, parents, students, alumni, and volunteers participated in a massive cleanup effort, without funding from and independent of the Orleans Parish School Board." Question: why didn't the school board help? It's their school, right? Was this a general problem that New Orleans was overwhelmed?
  • Enrollment - several items in the body are boldfaced, for example GPA, but should not be. Possibly these should be wikilinked, but not bolded.
  • Enrollment - Is this table also for the 2004-2005 school year? It doesn't say. How about omitting the table and including the percentages with the numbers, e.g., "422 (56%) Caucasian".
  • Academics "Approximately 99.5% of each graduating class enters a four-year college." - it appears that there are about 150 students in the senior class, so 99.5% would mean that all but one go to college. Is this correct? This statistic seems unlikely to be the same from year to year. The US News reference quotes the 99.5% figure for one particular year, not for every year as this narrative seems to imply.
  • Academics - SPS comparisons table - What's the connect between the five-star rating and the SPS scores? It's not clear why this table exists. If you want to say that BFHS has the best SPS of the three blue-ribbon schools, you can just say that (with a reference, of course).
  • This is due to some confusing aspects of the Louisiana Department of Education. They apparently rank public schools throughout Louisiana based on an SPS score, but it's not clear what ranges they use to give schools their "star" rating and why the SPS score fluctuates system-wide every year. I simply tried to state the facts. I put the table there to show in a concise manner the three schools given a five star rating, the fact that all three are schools designated "magnet" by the Louisiana Department of Education, and the SPS score of those three schools. It's basically identical to the table used as the source, except only the five star high school are displayed here --Jh12 (talk) 04:06, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yearbook 2006 - bluecadet interactive should not be bolded
  • Accusations of bias in admissions - "This became a particular point of interest during the desegregation of public schools following Brown v. Board of Education in 1954." The sequence is confusing, since the school was not founded until 1957. May be "in 1954" should be omitted. This narrative seems to imply that BHFS was founded as a segregated school and then desegregated in 1964, is this correct? Maybe we could just say that without bringing up BvBOE.
  • Notable alumni: The rule of thumb is that if there is not a Wikipedia article about a person, then the person is not notable enough for lists of notable persons. That means Alex Warren should be omitted.
  • In popular culture - these are usually formatted as bullets, one per reference, not as narrative. This means that "Benjamin Franklin High School has appeared in film, books, and other media." should be omitted, since we are giving examples of that.
  • (general) The nature of the school seems to have changed several times, as it is variously described as a magnet school, a charter school, an elite public school, a college preparatory school, and maybe other terms. The infobox claims it is both a magnet school and a charter school, is this correct? If the school's nature really did change, could the stages be described in History?
  • It is literally all of them. It has retained its "magnet" status despite being a charter school. Magnet schools are elite public schools that are designed to be college preparatory. --Jh12 (talk) 04:06, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • (general) there's a lot of unsubstantiated bragging, where the school is described as the best, having the highest performing students, "known" for the academic performance of its students, etc. Although probably true, somebody had to make those assessments, and a source needs to be given for each one.
  • The Louisiana rankings, Presidential Scholars, SAT, ACT, National Merits, Blue Ribbons, Newsweek rankings, and USNews rankings are supposed to support all of those. I have additional citations from the New York Times, Washington Post, Business Week, etc. but I'm pretty confident all of those sources are actually less significant than the references that are already provided. The only national ranking the school does not appear on currently is the Wall Street Journal, and that list is only for the top 50 public and private in the world. The statement "produce some of the highest performing students in Louisiana" is very close to the wording used by the source for that sentence, and almost all of the articles covering the school from the Wall Street Journal, CBS News, NPR all bring up the school's academics --Jh12 (talk) 04:06, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I believe you have run afoul of WP:SYNTH (a branch of WP:OR) rather than WP:V. That is, you can say the school has achievements A, B, C (giving reliable sources for each), but you cannot then draw your own conclusion that it is a wonderful school. If some reliable source says it is a wonderful school, you can quote that. For example, in the second paragraph of Academics the article lists a long string of accomplishments by the students, with references (all this is good), but leads with "Ben Franklin is known for the academic performance of its students," which is not sourced. Is this your own conclusion? If so, it is WP:SYNTH. --Uncia (talk) 15:27, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Except that synth "occurs when an editor puts together multiple sources to reach a novel conclusion that is not in any of the sources." This is not a novel conclusion. Almost every source describing the school brings up one thing: academics. I have changed the sentence to be the direct quote from CBS News, but I still do not think such a statement violated synth because similar quotes could have been pulled from dozens of other sources. The statement about ranking was more concerning to me, and I have tried to change it to reflect the facts. --Jh12 (talk) 17:48, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: I am here as requested and agree with Uncia's comments above. Here are some suggestions for improvement with an eye to FAC.

  • With regard to the lead, my rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way - this may help. I also like to get everything else in the article fixed, then set it aside a few days, then read it again and see if the lead does an adequate job of summarizing the article. Please see WP:LEAD
  • I also agree that the notable alumni should be limited to people that have articles on them on Wikipedia. Some of the alumni listed may well meet WP:NN even though they have no article about them now, but some seem non-notable to me.
  • I am also not sure about the bullet list of clubs and organizations - perhaps mention the total number, give some examples and leave the mind-numbing details to refs if someone wants to look them up.
  • In general bullet lists to be used sparingly. The model article about Stuyvesant High School has its alumni mostly in prose (paragraph) form, and the four Nobel Prize winners as bullet points. All the alumni there are wikilinked. Plano Senior High School is also a FA, and also links all its alumni.
  • Provide context for the reader - for example it needs to be made clear in the first sentence of History that the school opened as a whites only segregated school (can also say that the NO city schools were segregated at the same time).
  • Explain abbreviations like UNO by spelling it out before the first use of the abbreviation, so "University of New Orleans (UNO)"
  • There are several short (one or two sentence) paragraphs that should be combined with others, or perhaps expanded.
  • This caption is too long After Katrina, Ben Franklin received support from across the nation and around the world. Here, the United States Ambassador to Germany, William R. Timken, Jr., accepts a "Band of Friendship" from the students of Clay Oberschule, Ben Franklin's official GAPP partner school in Berlin, Germany on December 8, 2005.[14] Put the story in the text and have a more succinct caption.
  • Accusations of bias in admissions - the first paragraph here seems like it would be a better fit in the History section. I also wonder if adding a Katrina subsection to History and moving the documentary up there owuld make sense.

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog. Yours, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 02:52, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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