"While a student’s formative years from elementary and middle school are clearly important, they are not quite the same as a high school experience. Kids come of age during their adolescence, and their performances in the classroom have a direct impact on their future college applications. For these reasons, it is imperative for high school students to take their education seriously.
StartClass, an education research site powered by Graphiq, decided to take a look at some of the best high schools in the country. Using the most recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics and the Civil Rights Data Collection, we found the top public high school in every state. High schools are ranked by their StartClass Rating, which includes the following components:
Exam Passing Rates: This includes math proficiency rates and reading and language arts proficiency rates over the last three years.
School Environment: The school environment score consists of factors such as the student-teacher ratio, teacher experience and teacher absence rate.
Disciplinary Actions: This takes into account the school’s retention rate, in-school suspension rate and out-of-school suspension rate.
College Preparatory Measures: This takes into account the percent of students who pass an AP exam, or the percent of students who take the ACT or SAT.
Graduation/Retention Rates: The rate at which seniors graduate, as well as the percent of students who get held back a grade.
States are listed in alphabetical order. Additionally, 14 percent of the public high schools in our database did not report enough data to create a rating and were left out of consideration.
It’s important to note that while the StartClass Rating attempts to quantify the caliber of each high school, there are many factors outside of the score that can impact a student’s high school experience. Our list provides a good overview for some of the nation’s best high schools, but it is not meant to be definitive."
oh. this list - at least for my state - is really funny. A very small school in a very small rural farming town (population 700 for the town) was chosen. The residents in this town are probably proud, and excited. I just find it funny. Of course everyone will have their own opinions; what i would look for in a good school would vastly vary than what this article found.
I did notice that many of the schools were rather small, and now I’m wondering if everyone is going to suddenly want to live in that school district (and what effect it will have on the school).
I’m amused that The School without Walls made the list in DC. Also that they couldn’t find any kids of color to put in the picture. DC’s population is 50% African-American and 10% Hispanic, the public schools have an even greater percentage. (Their website looks better.) They also skim off the top - you can’t apply if you don’t have a 3.0 average.
The top school in a state is irrelevant to most people as they can’t all live within the area served by the school. It is much more useful to know which are the best (including costs) options available where you chose to live. This can mean choosing a job in a given area and a house in a part of town. It is also a lot easier to be a rich suburb with a school district that has the tax money to be used for a middle-upper class population.
One of our magnet schools made the list for Florida. I could have sent DD14 and DS17 to it, but we decided to go with our local high school. It’s AICE program is more than rigorous enough, while having them spend an extra 1.5 to 2 hours commuting each day didn’t seem worth it.
Sometimes the advantages of attending your local (still high performing) HS can outweigh the advantages of going to an elite magnet school.
Nothing against the school itself, but the one for NY seems pretty inaccurate. FWIW I’d say the same if my daughter’s HS was the one chosen! Good school, but the best? Don’t think so.?
Yeah. Can’t believe that the NY high school is the best in the state. I’d be shocked if about a dozen high schools in NYC weren’t better. you know, the ones that have turned out multiple nobel prize winners, the ones that turned out top designers and actors and singers, supreme court justices . . . just to name a few. . . .
Regarding NY…not surprised as many publications including USNWR tended to exclude or downplay academically top high schools because they’re “exam schools” like my public magnet or some other confounded reason.
Also find it interesting the named NJ high school isn’t one located in the suburban districts known for their high academic performance whether it’s West Windsor or a few NNJ areas I’m familiar with.
Lexington, MA is not as much of a surprise if one considers it’s one of the most expensive suburban towns…if not the most expensive in the state even back in the early '00s when I lived in the Boston area and a friend who worked for a real estate agency showed me how even an exceedingly tiny postage sized house no bigger than some smaller NYC apartments was going for ~$2 million back then.
@cobrat The NJ high school chosen is a magnet school! It’s not located in a town known for high academic performance, but it draws from a lot of the northern NJ towns with that reputation. If they did exclude NYCs public high schools because one tests into them, I’m wondering why they went with the NJ choice that they did; admission is exam-based.
The Illinois schools is a magnet school for the City of Chicago. There would probably be more than half a dozen schools in the running, and their choice, Northside College Prep, would not be an unreasonable one.