Talk:Cypress Bay High School

Does someone read the club list?needs more refs, photosVictuallers 15:49, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Information is needed to subsidate all factual claims made in the article. --ReZips 19:39, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Enrollment Counts
I am assuming that updated enrollment counts, graduation rates, summary of academic/athletic offerings and external links to school's important publications are all encyclopedic content about a high school. KikHolmes 11:50, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Dear John. I have updated a lot of information regarding enrollment, graduation rates, etc which was reverted because of unreliable or not independent sources. The school belongs to Broward County Public School the single only source of reliable information about its enrollment is Broward County or the school itself. Do you disagree with this? I have included official or trustworthy sources for every piece of information I added or updated. The reverted version takes an outdated count from a website called schooldigger.com which isn't reliable in any way. Please let me know your thoughts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KikHolmes (talk • contribs) 00:55, 4 November 2016 (UTC) KikHolmes (talk) 00:59, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Schooldigger is reliable to a point. They are what we call an aggregator. Their source for enrollment is as reliable as it gets, NCES, and obviously it would be better to cite them, but the numbers are the same. NCES is preferred as a source as using them allows comparison between schools. Not every district releases their numbers in the same format publicly as they report to NCES. For the straight enrollment number, there's not many differences. However, in numbers associated with enrollment it does. Some districts formulate their public releases like the census numbers, with Hispanic counted as an ethnic group instead of a racial group. Some track different groups (in California, for some reason, they track people of Fillapino decent). By using NCES numbers, we have one source for staffing (enumeration of which is often manipulated in public releases. NCES is always in FTE), student-to-teacher ratio, demographics and enrollment.  Having the most current number is far less important than having an evenly comparable number, as Wikipedia is not a newspaper but an encyclopedia, which by definition is tertiary. We don't care what the school has to say about itself. Hope this clears things up. You are to be commended for your use of secondary sources. We only source the most mundane of information to the school. Happy editing! John from Idegon (talk) 01:43, 4 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Dear John. Thanks for your answer and clarification. I checked how the NCES reports data on this page http://nces.ed.gov/statprog/2002/std1_5.asp and they do it in the same way that the school district and county does it. So there should be no problem making a comparison between schools. I was also under the impression that wikipedia encourages editors to include current and up-to-date information. Please let me know if I'm wrong about any of this.
 * On a second note, do you think that a short summary (researched and with sources) of academic and extracurricular offerings or graduation/college attendance rates is trivial or irrelevant information? Or what is the problem? KikHolmes (talk) 10:24, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Again, independent sourcing is more important than a more up to date figure. You should use the most up to date independent figure available. In most states that is NCES, although some states do have one year newer numbers available from the state Department of Education. We have a concensus not to include graduation rates, and what we discuss for academic offerings is limited to AP, fine arts and any highly unique offerings (keep in mind they would need to be unique enough that they have been written about in reliable independent secondary sources such as newspapers, books, magazines or academic journals). As far as extracurricular offerings, it must be something that would have some interest outside the school. Academic teams should be included (under Academics, not in a separate section) and you can source their existence to the school if need be. Any achievement however must have an independent source and we only discuss the highest level of team achievement (that would be a team state championship or higher). We do not discuss individual achievement (that is for both students and staff. We also do not use student or staff names, except for people who are notable and the head of the school). Clubs should most likely not be discussed, as it is quite doubtful independent sourcing would exist for them and discussion of clubs tends to denigrate into a directory listing over time. For US schools, athletics has a big import, far greater than in other countries. A listing of the varsity teams is good. If possible it should be independently sourced like to the state athletics sanctioning body. Same restrictions on achievement as above. Don't name coaches, don't discuss individual games or seasons. Any rivalry that can be documented to independent sources should be included as should the team's nickname, the athletic conference affiliation and the school colors.


 * Hope this helps. If you need any help, feel free to drop me a note. John from Idegon (talk) 15:52, 4 November 2016 (UTC)


 * So in your view an aggregator of questionable authority and outdated information is more reliable than an updated governmental source? Or is being independent your ultimate test of whether a source should be used or not? In the latter case, how is the Department of Education more independent than the Broward County Public Schools District and where does NCES get its data from? Please help me clarify this KikHolmes (talk) 16:16, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

It's not my position, it's the basic nature of an encyclopedia. As a tertiary source, an encyclopedia's content comes from independent sources. It is simply what this is. Sorry if you find that confusing, but it is what it is. We are not an almanac or a newspaper. John from Idegon (talk) 20:07, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Dear John, unfortunately you did not answer my question. I disagree that your rollback was useful. As I understand it, the objective of Wikipedia is to be as reliable and up-to-date an encyclopedia as possible and your rollbacks made it less so. Governmental sources are more reliable than aggregators of questionable authority that (as you know) simply regurgitate (when accurate) the same information provided by the governmental source. There is no logical reason to use outdated information simply because your favorite aggregator did not yet update it. By your logic, a huge amount of factual information would be gone from Wikipedia for using official reliable sources instead of less reliable and outdated independent ones. Since it seems like we can't have a consensus on this I suppose we will need a third opinion about it. Or what do you think? KikHolmes (talk) 20:57, 4 November 2016 (UTC)


 * I see no one has taken the dispute for a third opinion so I will try to simplify the matter. At issue is whether https://www.schooldigger.com/go/FL/schools/0018003815/school.aspx (an aggregator website with out-dated information) is a more encyclopedic source than http://www.broward.k12.fl.us/dsa/counts/1617/benchmark/Appendix%20C%20Diversity%201617.pdf (a subpage of http://www.broward.k12.fl.us/dsa/data-maps-gis.shtml a website from the local government with the most up-to-date information). In case the first one (aggregator) is more encyclopedic, is it so much so that one cannot use the second one (local government website) for the more up-to-date information? KikHolmes (talk) 09:09, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Are you aware that a third opinion has to be requested? Just follow the link.
 * And to restate my position: Independent sources are always preferred over sourcing information to the subject of the article (the school district is equally not independent, just as information in an article about Chevrolet from General Motors would not be). We are not an almanac or a newspaper. We are an encyclopedia, by definition tertiary. There is more value in having stats across the broad spectrum of school articles from the same independent source so the reader can use those statistics, covering a similar time period and collected in a uniform manner, comparatively. We have the same practice in articles about US communities, where the only figures we use for demographics comes from the census bureau. Lastly, schooldigger.com is reliable as a reporter of NCES statistics, however actually citing NCES would be preferred.  I'd be happy to switch to the actual NCES school summary page if that will solve this.  Feel free to request a third opinion. John from Idegon (talk) 16:41, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks John. With schooldigger.com out of the way, one question remains however. If the U.S. census bureau (controlled by the U.S. government) is used as a source for the U.S. population, then why can't the School District's Demographics & Student Assignments Department (controlled by the county government and not by the school) be used as a source for the school's enrollment? I would also be completely fine using NCES data, the problem is that it's outdated and the data comes from the School District, which is why one is out-dated and the other one isn't. KikHolmes (talk) 13:29, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Faulty logic. The school is controlled and owned by the school district. The school district's, and the school's, finances are directly tied to the enrollment numbers. Both state and federal aid to education are based on them. Say, Lake Placid, New York or the state of Indiana, are NOT controlled by the federal government and the figures the Census Bureau provides us for them are completely independent. I suppose there could be an argument for the Census count for the country not being independent, but really, who else is going to do it? This is beginning to get a bit tendentious. Get a third opinion if you want.  I'll switch the numbers to NCES reference today. Thanks. John from Idegon (talk) 17:52, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Third Opinion
A third opinion has been requested. It isn't entirely clear what the question is. It is clear that the question is which of two numbers to use as to enrollment. What is the argument for using NCES, and what is the argument for using schooldigger? I am not removing the third opinion request, but it will be removed in a day as expired. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:44, 11 November 2016 (UTC)


 * I can clarify my position. The numbers for schooldigger vs. NCES are exactly the same as schooldigger is simply an aggregator.  I have no problem changing the cite to NCES and would be happy to do that.  The primary point here is schooldigger/NCES vs. the school itself (or the school district, for which I see no difference).  I favor the NCES numbers for two reasons:
 * A secondary source is always preferred due to the simple fact that this is an encyclopedia, a tertiary source. The school and/or the district is primary.  Kik's opposition seems to be that the primary source is more current.
 * Using NCES (or schooldigger, which simply provides the NCES number and has been established as reliable for that) provides a uniform platform across the wider spectrum of all US school articles for statistics, much in the same way that using the census numbers provides in settlement articles. It allows reasonable comparisons for our readers, without having to be concerned with statistical methodology.  This is an encyclopedia, not an almanac or a newspaper.  Currency is not of prime importance.


 * Hope that helps and thanks for your efforts, . Are there problems at WP:3O?  I don't ever recall it taking this long to get a response from there. John from Idegon (talk) 17:22, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
 * If that is the question, then I support using the secondary figure, even if the primary figure is more current, based on Wikipedia's long-standing preferences for secondary sources. If the choice is between NCES and schooldigger (which it isn't), I would prefer NCES as an uninvolved government source.  I am removing the request.  Robert McClenon (talk) 19:12, 11 November 2016 (UTC)


 * , there is your third opinion. Unless you disagree with Robert's finding or my summary of the facts, that should end this.  If you do, please ping Robert in your reply.  I would propose (per WP:NODEADLINE and a bit of laziness) to hold off on changing the schooldigger source, as NCES will update to stats from 14-15 at some indefinite time in the near future (historically, they begin updating this month and finish up around the end of February).  If you need me here, just ping.  If I can be of any assistance on future encyclopedic changes to this or any other school article (or place article for that matter), feel free to drop me a note on my talk.  Thanks for your patience. John from Idegon (talk) 19:49, 11 November 2016 (UTC), co-coordinator, Wikiproject Schools