What's in a List? LHS Absent from One, Nearly Tops Another

Does GoLocal Worcester know something Newsweek doesn’t?

Hard not to ponder that question after Lexington High nearly topped the Worcester pub’s list of the state’s best high schools, but was left off Newsweek’s rankings of the nation’s top high schools.

The No. 3 spot Lexington High claimed on GoLocal Worcester’s list of Massachusetts’ Top High Schools in 2013 appears a little closer to the norm, as these “Best of” lists go.

In the not too distant past, LHS grabbed the No. 2 spot in Boston Magazine’s Top 20 for 2012, and earned the No. 204 spot nationally (No. 11 in Mass) from US News.

Keep in mind, the two publications use different formulas and different starting points. This resulted in different schools making the grade, and different grades for schools that appeared on both lists.

Newsweek compiled its rankings after sending out a survey to more than 5,000 high schools in the US, with about 2,500 schools responding in 2013. GoLocal, meanwhile, “employs a formula developed at Babson College to assess and weight each school's latest MCAS and SAT scores, plus per pupil funding, student-teacher ratios, and graduation rates,” according to the site.

In GoLocal’s calculations, they used the latest available data—current as of April 2013—from the Massachusetts Department of Secondary and Elementary Education's databases.

You can read more about Newsweek's methodology here. And you can read more about GoLocal Worcester's methodology here. 

Your Turn: With all that in mind, we want to know, How would you rank Lexington High?