User:RJHall/High Schools

This is a personal archive of information regarding legitimate High School/Secondary School (or equivalent grades 9-12) articles. I'm trying to find a suitable personal standard of notability. A proposed policy on schools, Wikipedia:Schools, was rejected on 2006-04-06.

Notability

Per WP:N, an article may be non-notable if it is original research, unverifiable, or a vanity page. So an article on a confirmed High School with legitimate references (such as a link to a government web site) that is written from a neutral point of view would satisfy this criteria of notability. Likewise the vanity guidelines can be met by writing the article on a legitimate High School and avoiding promotional expressions.

The second criteria is related to importance. Unfortunately this is dependent on perspective, so what may be important to one person might not be to another. A reasonable approach might be to compare High Schools to other comparable institutions. These could be, for example, small colleges or local governments. Another possibility is a comparison to geographic pages, such as a page about a village.

I personally find most High Schools to be notable institutions for the following reasons:

• For a significant portion of the population of the United States, High Schools represent the final years of formal education prior to full-time entry into the work force. In this sense they are as significant as junior colleges in the educational services they provide.
• High Schools are typically the largest educational institutions in many school districts. For smaller towns they can be the largest government institution.
• High Schools are significant locations for many of their attendees. Most High Schools have class reunions for former school-mates to get back in touch and reminisce, thus establishing the notability of High School attendance for the alumni. A significant number of individuals also find their future spouse at the High School.
• Most scholarships for attending college or university are awarded at the High School level. Accomplishments in High School are essential for attending college and determining a life path.
• Nearly all High Schools have distinguishing features that make them unique institutions, rather than being cookie-cutter establishments such as a branch store or restaurant. They are typically unique in age, architecture, ethnic composition, accomplishments, laws, history, mascots and colors, rivalries, financial status, and sometimes differ in curricular emphasis.
• A High School with a typical student population of 1,000 that remains active for 30-40 years can graduate up to 10,000 students. (About 90% of American students complete high school.) That's comparable to the size of a small town.

Non-notable

The following would probably make me suspect that the High School is not notable:

• A defunct High School of no particular stature.
• A very small High School with under, say, 200 students, with no other distinguishing attributes.
• The school is still under construction.
• A High School with no physical infrastructure for in-person education.
• The page consists primarily of vanity or advertisement.
• There are no corroborating sources to confirm the existence of the school.
• A stub school article with only a single descriptive paragraph that has been in existence at least 6 months.

Schools of borderline notability could be readily merged onto schoold district pages. In fact if the school article is only a paragraph or two in length, it would probably make more sense to do a merge and redirect to the school district page. The school page can always be filled out again when more information becomes available.

See also

• Wikipedia:Schools
• Wikipedia:Watch/schoolwatch/Schools for deletion archive