Newsweek Names Naperville Schools Among Country's Best

Just in time for the start of the school year, Newsweek released its annual list Wednesday of the top public high schools in America for 2015.

And on that list are four Naperville schools. Naperville North High School came in at No. 58 and Naperville Central High School came in at No. 98. Neither school made the list in 2014, but in 2013 North was listed at 285 and Central placed at 260.

Waubonsie Valley High School placed at No. 393 and Metea Valley High School at 497. While those may seem like low numbers, it’s important to remember that only 500 schools made the list out of nearly 30,000. Although the schools did not make the list in 2014, in 2013 Waubonsie came in at No. 646 and Metea Valley ranked at 458.

Naperville North High School Principal Stephanie Posey said she couldn’t be more excited to be recognized and that the ranking is the culmination of hard work.

“This is a direct result of the dedicated and hardworking staff and student body and of course a  very supportive community of parents and community members,” Posey said. “This is a very comprehensive high school that meets the needs of all the students that are enrolled here and meets the long tradition of excellence in academics and extracurriculars. We strive to make sure the kids have a great experience here. It’s very nice to be recognized for that.”

Naperville Central HS Principal Bill Wiesbrook said the ranking is a result of incredible students and great families that send their students to Naperville Central.

“We have a terrific faculty, as well, that have high expectations for kids,” Wiesbrook said.

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.”

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

“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.”

There are almost 30,000 public high schools in the United States.

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.

See the full rankings here.