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RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC— U.S. News & World Report today announced the 2018 Best High Schools rankings, highlighting top-performing public schools on a state and national level. For the fourth year in a row, U.S. News collaborated with RTI International, a leading non-profit research institute, 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 Chandler 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 historically underserved 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) and International Baccalaureate (IB) tests. The rankings include data from states and the federal government on more than 20,500 public high schools.
“Top-ranked schools succeed in three main areas: exceeding expectations on state proficiency tests, offering challenging coursework and graduating their students,” said Anita Narayan, managing editor of Education at U.S. News. “We encourage parents to use the Best High Schools rankings and data to research which schools in their state and nationwide are ensuring students are well-equipped for the future.”
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, 5,941 schools received medals. Massachusetts, California, and Maryland claim the highest percentage of eligible high schools that received gold or silver medals. A state-by-state breakdown is available here.
Along with the national rankings, U.S. News released 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., director of the Center for P-12 Education at RTI International, led the data collection and analysis for RTI International.
Media contact: Madeline Smanik, Education-PR@usnews.com.
