Newsweek Releases List Of 2016 Best Public High Schools In America

Newsweek’s list of the best public high schools in the country was revealed Thursday morning, and Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria, Virginia, topped the list yet again.

Here are the top 10:

1. Thomas Jefferson HS for Science and Technology: Alexandria, VA
2. Academy for Math, Science, and Engineering: Rockaway, NJ
3. Stuyvesant High School: New York, NY
4. Union County Magnet High School: Scotch Plains, NJ
5. The Early College at Guilford: Greensboro, NC
6. Stanton College Preparatory School: Jacksonville, FL
7. Whitney (Gretchen) High School: Cerritos, CA
8. Northside College Preparatory High School: Chicago, IL
9. North Oldham High School: Goshen, KY
10. Middlesex Cty Acad. for Sci,, Math, & Engineering Tech.: Edison, NJ

We know you see a lot of lists. Ten Most Redneck Towns. Twenty Least-Affordable States. Fattest Counties In The United States. Best Cities for People with Two Kids, One Dog but No Cats.

Newsweek’s rankings of the best public high schools in the country stand apart.

The school rankings are borne of real research. Newsweek, along with the analytics firm Westat, uses legitimate and objective measurements to put together its annual ranking of the country’s best high schools.

And just in time for the start of school, Newsweek released 2016’s list Thursday morning.

See the complete rankings here.

So, how do they come up with the rankings?

Newsweek looked at six measurements and weighted them to come up with a “college readiness index.” The rankings are meant to show how well high schools do at preparing students for college.

Those measurements and their weight are:

• Holding power: 10 percent
• Ratio of counselor/full-time equivalent to student enrollment: 10 percent
• Weighted SAT/ACT: 17.5 percent
• Weighted AP/IB/dual enrollment composite: 17.5 percent
• Graduation rate: 20 percent
• College enrollment rate: 25 percent

In all, 6,477 of the nation’s 15,819 public high schools met the criteria to be considered in Newsweek’s rankings.

Newsweek used school performance data from the National Center for Education Statistics to narrow down the list of schools.

Of those 6,477 schools, 4,760 were considered for the overall rankings, while 4,452 made the cut for another list of schools that were “beating the odds.” (Many schools made both lists.)

For the the “beating the odds” rankings, a school’s college readiness scores were adjusted for how they compared against other schools that had similar percentages of students eligible for free or reduced lunch.

Here were the top 10 schools on that list:

1. Stuyvesant High School: New York, NY
2. Townsend Harris: Flushing, NY
3. Northside College Preparatory High School: Chicago, IL
4. Brooklyn Technical High School: Brooklyn, NY
5. School of Science and Engineering: Dallas, TX
6. Staten Island Technical High School: Staten Island, NY
7. HS for Math, Science, and Engineering at the City College of New York: New York, NY
8. Harbor Teacher Preparation Academy: Wilmington, CA
9. Early College H. S.: Laredo, TX
10. Irma L. Rangel Young Women's Leadership School: Dallas, TX

See the full “beating the odds” list here.

Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria, Virginia, took the top spot in the overall rankings for the third year in a row.

Thomas Jefferson has been a regular powerhouse on previous best schools rankings and puts an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics classes.

“We’re preparing kids to go into fields that have yet to be invented,” Principal Evan Glazer told Newsweek last year. “We’re really focusing more on skills and an appreciation for STEM. But if they decide to become journalists, we convey that they have a unique knowledge base in STEM. They would be able to contribute to articles on energy, the environment, and government policy on those important issues.”

You can view last year’s rankings here.

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