Highland Park High School Ranked No. 21 Among Suburban Public Schools

HIGHLAND PARK, IL — Highland Park High School ranked as the 32nd best public high school in the state and No. 21 in the Chicago suburbs in the latest "Best High Schools" analysis from U.S. News and World Report.

The news outlet compiled data on 673 schools in Illinois and 17,655 schools nationally, ranking them on their students' performance on state-mandated standardized tests, their graduation rates and college readiness levels.

According to the 2024 rankings, Highland Park High School is the 824th best public high school in the United States.

In Illinois, broken down by individual ranking factors, HPHS was ranked 28th for the breadth of its college curriculum, 31st in proficiency on state assessments, 37th in college readiness, 69th in performance on state assessments and 252nd for its graduation rate.

The top five public high schools in the state are all selective-enrollment Chicago Public Schools. In the suburbs, the five top-ranked schools are Adlai Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Vernon Hills High School, New Trier Township High School, Hinsdale Central High School and Libertyville High School.

University High School in Normal, the University of Illinois lab school, was the only high school outside of the Chicago area to crack the top 20 in the state.

U.S. News provided more detail in a scorecard used to calculate Highland Park High School's 2024 ranking:

• 67 percent of HPHS students are proficient in science
• 57 percent are proficient in reading
• 51 percent are proficient in math
• 48 percent passed at least one Advanced Placement exam
• 92 percent of students in the class of 2022 graduated on time

In the 2024 Best High Schools list, Illinois ranks 24th among U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Among the 673 of ranked schools, 37 are in the top 5 percent nationally, 159 were in the top 25 percent. State-by-state performance is based solely on which states have the largest proportion of schools in the top 25 percent.

U.S. News chooses not to display the rankings for lower-performing schools in the bottom 25 percent of its rankings. Instead it displays them all as No. 13,242-17,655.

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