Penncrest HS Ranked Among Best PA High Schools By US News

MEDIA, PA – The greater Philadelphia area is home to some of the best schools in the nation, and a new list from U.S. News & World Report of the best high schools in Pennsylvania includes several Delaware County high schools. Including Penncrest High School.

Five Pennsylvania schools earned gold medal schools, while 102 schools received a silver medal, and 109 more got a bronze.

Penncrest High School earned the silver medal honor and was ranked No. 48 in the state.

Penncrest students, of which there are 1,228, eclipse statewide math and reading proficiency levels, with 82 percent in math and 96 percent in reading. Statewide the level is 70 percent for both.

The school boasts a 37.7 percent college readiness level and a 100 percent graduations rate.

Penncrest is ranked 1,445th in the nation.

Check out Penncrest High School's full report from U.S. News here.

U.S. News & World Report released its new ranks Wednesday, May 9.

The new list evaluates more than 20,500 public high schools.

See the full list of PA high school ranks here.

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.

U.S. News also ranked the states. Pennsylvania, where 15.8 percent of schools received a gold or silver medal, tied with Ohio for 14th place in that rating. The state-by-state performance rating was based on which states have the highest the highest proportion of schools with gold and silver medals. Massachusetts was the leading performer, followed by California and Maryland.

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. The final step was to determine college readiness. (You can read the full methodology here.)

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