Waltham Left Off 'America's Best High Schools 2015'

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

Waltham High School did not make the list, but 19 other Massachusetts high schools did:

No. 52: Medfield
54: Weston
67: Newton North
75: Westwood High
93: Hopkinton
115: Hingham
128: Shrewsbury
139: Groton-Dunstable
207: Longmeadow
253: Newburyport
278: Georgetown
315: Arlington
381: King Philip
396: Marblehead
424: Ashland
448: Natick
451: Braintree
492: Chelmsford

Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia topped Newsweek’s rankings for the second year in a row. The list included 500 high schools.

Newsweek: America’s Top High Schools 2015

The rankings were compiled using several metrics, including graduation rates, college enrollment, SAT and ACT scores, and teacher-student ratio, among others.

“Some factors are more important, especially since our rankings focus on college readiness,” Jim Impoco, editor-in -chief of Newsweek, told Patch. “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.”