Aliso Niguel and Dana Point High Schools Earn Top Rankings

According to a press relase, five of Capistrano Unified School District’s high schools are among the best in the nation, according to rankings released by Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

San Clemente (No. 380), Aliso Niguel (No. 440), Dana Hills (No. 678), Capistrano Valley (No. 734), and San Juan Hills (No. 900) high schools each cracked the list of the country’s Top 1,000 high schools. Tesoro High School did not submit data for the Newsweek evaluation. This is the second time within the month that a national news organization has ranked district high schools among the nation’s best.

“We know that our community is served by high quality public schools,” Board President Dr. Gary Pritchard said. “These public acknowledgements of our success should be celebrated. Our schools are a reflection of the value our community places on having a world-class education available for all of its children. These recognitions also reinforce the wisdom of this Board and superintendent to focus on classroom instruction, which is making an excellent school system even better.”

The Newsweek/The Daily Beast rankings analyzed four-year, on-time graduation rate, percentage of graduates accepted to college, Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) tests taken per student, average SAT or ACT scores, average AP or IB test scores, and the number of AP or IB courses offered per student. More than 2,300 schools were assessed to produce the Top 1,000 schools.

In last year’s rankings of the Top 500 high schools by Newsweek and The Daily Beast, was ranked No. 217 and Capistrano Valley High School was listed at No. 459.

Earlier this month, Tesoro, San Clemente, Capistrano Valley, and Aliso Niguel high schools all and were ranked in the top 1,000 schools nationwide in the U.S.News & World Report ranking of the nation’s best high schools. U.S. News evaluated and ranked nearly 22,000 high schools across the nation.