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I know I'm late getting to this, but I just read the entire thread and had to put in my $.02 regarding GBN as "one of the top five high schools in Illinois."
I grew up not far from GBN, and heard a lot about it since I had friends there, and a friend of my mother's taught in the school district. It all has to do with money. A lot of the parents who have kids that go to GBN say it is the best. My parents think that the best high school in Illinois is Maine East, moved to Niles when I was little so that they would be in the Maine school district, and would never have sent me or my sisters to GBN even if someone bought them a house in Northbrook. Sure, GBN has more money than ME. It (probably) has more books per student, more money to spend, better technological and athletic facilities, a lower pregnancy rate, and a higher percentage of students who go on to college. However, my parents said that they would never pull me or my sisters out of Maine East, even if we had the chance to go to New Trier or one of the Glenbrook schools, because Maine East had what my parents valued above all else: a student population that is the most diverse of any high school in Illinois. They would not feel "lucky" to live on the North Shore, or have their kids at GBN, because that's not what they want. My parents feel lucky to have had the opportunity to send their kids to ME, because the diverse student population was more important to them than the high SAT scores. (Maine East's academics are plenty rigorous for those who want them.)
Overall, ME students score low on the SAT because a large percentage of the school speaks English as a second language. Are the students less bright and less likely to perform well in the grand scheme of life? Absolutely not. They're just as smart as everyone else. I take the "top high school" title with a grain of salt, because a school with more money is going to be able to participate in more events that will get them noticed, and turn out higher reading and math scores, etc. Though I may not have attended a "top" high school, I learned some of the most important life lessons while attending ME. I didn't get out of high school and see a world that didn't match my life experiences. I was never pressured to attend a four-year college, or once I decided to go to college, I was never pressured to attend a certain school. GBN is not better than ME, nor is ME inherently better than GBN. It all depends on what you want out of a school.
"The best" is completely a matter of perspective. It shouldn't be based on money, or the number of students attending four-year colleges after graduation (not all kids want to go to a four-year college right after graduation). The bottom line is that rankings like that are all about money, which I believe is not completely fair. I can see why a hazing incident like this one would happen at GBN, because there is so much pressure put on the students to succeed, and they're not always taught (again, I am NOT talking about every single student in the school) how to handle conflict and pressure in a healthy way. Could an incident like this happen at ME? Absolutely. It could happen anywhere with the right combination of people. I don't find it shocking that it happened at GBN, though I am saddened by the incident...and I have also now taken up more than my fair share of space on this thread.
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