Nobody Does it Better: The Top Public High Schools in the Country

Newsweek's annual survey on the top American high schools has just been released

Does high school really prepare kids for college — and life? Some of them do, and some of them do it much, much better than others.

For more than a decade, Newsweek has been ranking the top public high schools in America, and this year they changed their methodology in hopes of highlighting solutions to problems (inspired by Waiting for ‘Supeman’) like cash-strapped districts, No Child Left Behind mandates and parent and student stress.

The new ranking criteria had six components: graduation rate (25%), college matriculation rate (25%), and AP tests taken per graduate (25%), plus average SAT/ACT scores (10%), average AP/IB scores (10%), and AP courses offered per graduate (5%).

More than 1,100 of the top public high schools across the country supplied internal data to Newsweek for the survey. Five hundred schools landed on the list. Here’s a look at best of the best:

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School of Science and Engineering Magnet

Located in Dallas, it ranked No. 1 in Newsweek’s survey. The student/teacher ratio is 21.0, graduation rate is 100 percent, college bound students are 100 percent, and the average SAT score is 1786.

Image + Source: Newsweek