Newsroom
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC— U.S. News & World Report today announced the 2017 Best High Schools rankings, highlighting top-performing public schools on a state and national level. U.S. News collaborated with RTI International to research and produce the rankings.
BASIS Scottsdale in Arizona earned the No. 1 spot nationally, followed by two other Arizona schools in the BASIS charter school network: BASIS Tucson North and BASIS Oro Valley.
Researchers at RTI helped collect and analyze the data behind the rankings using the U.S. News methodology, which combined four aspects of school performance: (1) the performance of all students on state assessments in reading and mathematics; (2) the performance of disadvantaged student subgroups on these assessments; (3) the school’s graduation rate; (4) and the rates at which high school students participate in and perform well on Advanced Placement ® (AP) tests. The rankings include data on more than 22,000 public high schools.
“It is critical that students graduate from high school to put them on a successful path to college and a career,” said Anita Narayan, managing editor of Education at U.S. News. “We encourage parents to use the data included in the 2017 Best High Schools rankings to help make informed decisions about their children’s education.”
U.S. News differentiates high schools with gold, silver and bronze medals, using gold medals to indicate the greatest level of college readiness. In this year’s edition of Best High Schools, 6,041 schools received medals. Maryland, Florida, and California claim the highest percentage of eligible high schools that received gold and silver medals. A state-by-state breakdown is available here.
Along with the national rankings, U.S. News released new Best STEM Schools, Best Charter Schools, Best Magnet Schools and individual statewide rankings.
The U.S. News Best High Schools website includes data assembled by RTI for thousands of schools. For more information about Best High Schools and to view the full list of rankings, visit www.usnews.com/highschools.
Benjamin Dalton, Ph.D., Senior Education Research Analyst at RTI International, led the data collection and analysis for RTI International.
