DeKalb School of the Arts Makes Newsweek's 2015 Top High Schools List

By Greg Hambrick

DeKalb School of the Arts is one of the top public high schools in America, according to the latest list from Newsweek. The school finished at No. 368 in the annual list.

The rankings were compiled using several metrics, including graduation rate, college enrollment rate, SAT and ACT scores, AP and IB scores and participation, teacher-student ratio and dropout rates.

“Some factors are more important, especially since our rankings focus on college readiness,” Jim Impoco, editor in chief of Newsweek, told Patch via email. “We place emphasis on criteria like college enrollment and graduation rate since we know that those are some of the biggest indicators of whether students are prepared for college.”

In July, DeKalb School of the Arts also ranked nationally in the U.S. News and World Report’s annual list.

Here are the top 10 high schools in the United States, according to Newsweek:

1. Thomas Jefferson High (Alexandria, VA)
2. High Technology High School (Lincroft, NJ)
3. Academy for Mathematics Science and Engineering (Rockaway, NJ)
4. Union County Magnet High School (Scotch Plains, NJ)
5. Bergen County Academies (Hackensack, NJ)
6. Gretchen Whitney High (Cerritos, CA)
7. Middlesex County Academy for Math Science & Engineering (Edison, NJ)
8. International Academy (Bloomfield Hills, MI)
9. Academy of Allied Health and Science (Neptune, NJ)
10. Walter Payton College Preparatory HS (Chicago, IL)

New Jersey has six of the top 10 public high schools in the country, while Virginia, Michigan, California and Illinois had one each. The list includes 500 schools.

Thomas Jefferson took the top spot for the second year in a row. High Technology High School rocketed to No. 2 from No. 185 last year.

Neither Academy for Mathematics Science and Engineering nor Bergen County made the list in 2014, while Union County dropped to the No. 4 spot from No. 2.

“The top 20 schools on the ‘America’s Top High Schools’ are neck and neck. They all have perfect or near-perfect college enrollment and graduation rates,” Impoco said. “You start to see more variation as you look further down the list and also when you look at the factors that have less weight, like test scores.”

See the full rankings here.

This year’s rankings were weighted by:

• Enrollment Rate—25 percent
• Graduation Rate—20 percent
• Weighted AP/IB/Dual Enrollment composite—17.5 percent
• Weighted SAT/ACT composite—17.5 percent
• Change in student enrollment between 9th-12th grades, to control for dropout rates—10 percent
• Counselor-to-Student Ratio—10 percent