America's Best High Schools For 2017: U.S. News And World Report

U.S. News and World Report has crunched the numbers for 2017, releasing its annual list of best high schools in the country, ranking the schools on a national and a state level.

Schools in Arizona and Texas dominated the list, landing eight of the top ten spots. Though Arizona and Texas feature prominently on the list, Maryland is the leading performer, a benchmark that is based on which states have the largest proportion of their high schools earning gold and silver medals. 27.5 percent of Maryland's eligible schools earned gold and silver medals from U.S. News. Florida came in second with 24.4 percent and California came in third with 23.6 percent.

The 2017 rankings of best high schools identify the top-performing public schools at both the national and the state level and include data on more than 20,000 high schools. For the first time, the rankings for 2017 also included the best STEM, magnet and charter schools in the country. To be considered among the best, high schools had to pass a rigorous four-step process that sought to determine whether a school was serving all of its students and not just those who are college bound.

The first step determined whether students at a particular school were performing better than statistically expected for students in that state, factoring in percentages of economically disadvantaged students to identify schools. Schools that passed this step then moved on to step two, which assessed whether disadvantaged students performed at or better than state averages for the least-advantaged students.

For the next two steps, U.S. News looked at graduation rates and college readiness performance. To pass step three, high schools had to have a graduation rate of 75 percent or greater. For the 2017 rankings, the graduation rate reflect students who entered the ninth grade in the 2011-2012 school year. Finally, U.S. News calculated a college readiness index, which was the number of 12th graders who took and passed at least one AP test, divided by the number of 12th graders at that school.

To be ranked numerically nationally, schools had to pass steps 1-3 and have a college readiness index of 20.91 or above.

A total of 6,041 schools were ranked, 500 schools receiving gold medals, 2,109 schools receiving silver medals and the remaining 3,432 schools received bronze medals. Schools that received bronze medals passed the first three steps but were not ranked numerically in the national rankings. The state rankings were based on whether a high school received a gold, silver or a bronze medal and had a CRI value of 10 or higher. Previously, only gold and silver medal winners were ranked numerically on the state level.

The top high schools in the country are:

1. BASIS Scottsdale, Scottsdale, Arizona
2. BASIS Tucson North, Tucson, Arizona
3. BASIS Oro Valley, Oro Valley, Arizona
4. School for the Talented and Gifted, Dallas, Texas
5. BASIS Peoria, Peoria, Arizona
6. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Alexandria, Virginia
7. Basis Chandler, Chandler, Arizona
8. Carnegie Vanguard High School, Houston, Texas
9. School of Science and Engineering, Dallas, Texas
10. Pacific Collegiate Charter, Santa Cruz, California

>>>Click here to see the full list.

Image via Shutterstock