Schools

VA Has 103 Of America's Best High Schools In 2018, US News Says

U.S. News & World Report released its annual list of best high schools in the country. See how Virginia schools ranked.

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ALEXANDRIA, VA — A total of 103 Virginia schools ranked among the best in the U.S., according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2018 rankings of best high schools in the country. The highest ranked Virginia school on the list was Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria.

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.

Eleven Virginia schools received a gold medal, 35 received a silver medal and 57 schools received a bronze medal. The state-by-state performance rating was based on which states have the highest proportion of schools with gold and silver medals. Based on this metric, Massachusetts was the leading performer, followed by California and Maryland.

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“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.

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Here’s how Virginia’s schools finished according to place and medal in the 2018 rankings:

Bronze medal schools are not ranked by U.S. News.

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 insight on the data.

Image via Shutterstock

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