Smithtown High School Among Best In NY: U.S. News & World Report

U.S. News and World Report has crunched the numbers for 2018, releasing its annual list of best high schools in the country. Schools are ranked on a national and a state level.

Smithtown High School West was among the top 100 schools to make the list of the best schools in New York. The local school ranked at number No. 73.

New York City's elite public high schools took the 13 top spots in the state rankings.

Edgemont was the first of the region's schools in the state rankings, at No. 14. Overall, 25 local schools made the Top 100 in the New York State rankings.

The 2018 best high school rankings were released on Wednesday and evaluate over 20,500 public high schools. U.S. News identified schools that best serve all students and assessed how prepared students are for college-level work. Schools are also recognized with gold, silver and bronze medals with gold indicating the greatest level of college readiness.

"Top-ranked schools succeed in three main areas: exceeding expectations on state proficiency tests, offering challenging coursework and graduating their students," Anita Narayan, managing editor of Education at U.S. News, said in a press release.

New York has 413 schools in the 2018 U.S. News Best High Schoolsrankings, including 57 gold medal schools, 167 silver medal schools and 189 bronze medal schools.

To determine the rankings, U.S. News teamed up with the social science research firm RTI International.

A variety of data sources, including the Common Core of Data, College Board and the International Baccalaureate, were used.

A four-step process was used to rank all eligible schools. The first two steps were to determine whether students were performing better than statistically expected in the state and whether minority were performing at or better than the state average for minority students, which was the second step. The third step required schools to meet or surpass a certain graduation benchmark and the final step was to determine college readiness. (You can read the full methodology here.)

The top 10 high schools in the U.S. overall are:

1. BASIS Scottsdale (AZ)
2. BASIS Chandler (AZ)
3. BASIS Oro Valley (AZ)
4. BASIS Tucson North (AZ)
5. BASIS Flagstaff (AZ)
6. Meridian School (TX)
7. International Academy of Macomb (MI)
8. BASIS Peoria (AZ)
9. Baccalaureate School for Global Education (NY)
10. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (VA)

Click here to see the full rankings and for more information.

Lanning Taliaferro contribute to this report.

Photo: Google Maps