Best Birmingham Area High Schools: U.S. News & World Report

BIRMINGHAM, AL - Birmingham metro high schools had a good showing in the most recent U.S. News & World Report annual high school rankings.

The 2018 best high school rankings were released on Wednesday and evaluate over 20,500 public high schools. U.S. News identified schools that best serve all students and assessed how prepared students are for college-level work. Schools are also recognized with gold, silver and bronze medals with gold indicating the greatest level of college readiness.

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"Top-ranked schools succeed in three main areas: exceeding expectations on state proficiency tests, offering challenging coursework and graduating their students," Anita Narayan, managing editor of Education at U.S. News, said in a press release.

Homewood High School, Oak Mountain High School, Vestavia Hills and Hewitt-Trussville were ranked with Mountain Brook among the state's top 10. Here are the Birmingham-area high schools that were given a silver ranking, and how each fared on the list, with their overall state ranking in parenthesis:

• Mountain Brook (2)
• Homewood (3)
• Oak Mountain (5)
• Vestavia Hills (6)
• Hewitt-Trussville (7)
• Ramsay (12)
• Spain Park (14)
• Thompson (16)
• Chelsea (19)
• Helena (23)
• Hoover (26)
• Pelham (27)
• Shades Valley (32)

To determine the rankings, U.S. News teamed up with the social science research firm RTI International. A variety of data sources, including the Common Core of Data, College Board and the International Baccalaureate, were used.

A four-step process was used to rank all eligible schools. The first two steps were to determine whether students were performing better than statistically expected in the state and whether minority were performing at or better than the state average for minority students, which was the second step. The third step required schools to meet or surpass a certain graduation benchmark and the final step was to determine college readiness. (You can read the full methodology here.)

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