Belmont High Named One Of US Best ... Again

A national magazine this week released a list of the best high schools in the country.

Hazard to take a guess which Massachusetts high school is on it?

In its latest issue and on its website, Newsweek honored Belmont High School as one of the top schools in the U.S.

It is the second time in the past three months that a national publication has recognized Belmont schools for providing students with one of the best educational opportunities in the country.

And while Belmont should be on top of this list for the next few years, the cumulatively impact of education spending cuts could result in the high school slipping behind better-funded schools, said Belmont High School Principal Mike Harvey.

Newsweek's annual list of outstanding high schools is based on how hard school staffs work to challenge students with AP college level courses and tests. Using its criteria, Belmont is ranked 266 nationwide, placing it in the top two percent of secondary schools across the country.

And taking away the charter, magnate and exam-based schools that recruit or attract only the best students from a community or region, Belmont High School is one of the highest-ranked general public high schools in Massachusetts and across the United States.

Belmont High offers 16 Advanced Placement courses, an extraordinary number for not just public schools but for those that target gifted students, said another publication.

"We're very proud to be included in the Newsweek rankings of America's Top High Schools.  It is a testament to the hard work of our faculty and students and to the high-quality education that Belmont High School is able to provide the community," said Harvey.

"It's also nice because it really is a validation of something that we're already doing.  We do not 'push' students to take AP in order to improve our ranking.  Students take AP here because they feel they are ready for the highest level curriculum available," said Harvey.  

"It is amazing that he have such high numbers of students that feel that confident in their abilities and in the preparation they've received here," he said.

In addition to the high level of AP participation, 30 seniors who graduated this year and 16 juniors earned perfect 800 scores on a portion of the SAT I and II exam and 11 received National Merit Scholarships.

In the past two years, more than 25 graduates were accepted to prestigious Ivy League schools, part of the 70 percent of graduates to go on to attend four-year private colleges and universities as more than 25 percent accept admissions to four-year public institutions.

In April, Forbes teamed up with the school performance website Great Schools named "bucolic" Belmont as the highest-rated public school system in communities with median home prices between $600,000 and $800,000 in the country.

Speaking on MSNBC on April 11, Great Schools' founder and CEO Bill Jackson said what all the highest-ranking communities have in common "tend to be community values that is clearly aligned with the education of children."

Last year, the high school received a gold medal from U.S. News & World Report naming it one of the country's 100th-best non-private high schools.

Harvey believes Belmont's ranking will stay steady for the next few yeas because Newsweek uses the number of students taking the Advanced Placement Examination as its criteria for evaluating students, and AP participation is currently holding steady.

"But I am concerned that continued budget cuts over the next several years will force us to make reductions to the core programs that feed into the AP classes that students take in the 11^th and 12^th grade.  This might eventually lead to smaller numbers of students feeling confident enough to take the AP exam," he said.