Mystic Valley Makes Newsweek's Best High Schools List Again

For the second straight year, Newsweek magazine has ranked the Mystic Valley Regional Charter School in Malden among the nation's best public high schools, the school announced in a press release issued this week.

On Newsweek's website, Mystic Valley is ranked as the 278th best public high school in the nation. Over 230 Melrose students attended Mystic Valley this school year.

Newsweek's rankings are based on three factors, according to a FAQ on its website. First, the magazine takes the total number of Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB) or Cambridge tests given at a school each year and divides by the number of graduating seniors. Mystic Valley only offers the IB program.

The magazine then takes into account the percentage of students who qualify for federally subsidized lunches, as a measure of the percentage of low-income students at each school. Finally, it uses the school's "Equity and Excellence" (E&E) rate, a statistic developed by The College Board — the non-profit that administers the SATs and AP tests — that is the percentage of all graduating seniors who had at least one score of 3 or above on at least one AP test sometime in high school. Schools such as Mystic Valley that use the IB program are asked to calculate their own E&E rate.

According to Newsweek's rankings, Mystic Valley is the 5th best high school in Massachusetts, behind Sturgis Charter Public in Hyannis (28th overall); MATCH Charter in Boston (49th overall); Boston Latin (141st overall); and Belmont High School (266th overall).

Last year, Newsweek ranked Mystic Valley 93rd in the nation.