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U.S. News & World Report: Best High Schools in 2017

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TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Top 800, just barely.

Eek, #1,097. I thought my school was better than that.

Out of >37K in the country I'd say that's pretty good.
 

Cocaloch

Member
I think this is messed up... I went to what was considered the best public school in my state and it isn't even ranked. For some reason the math proficiency rating is at 20%. It was consistently the only school in Maine ranked in the Top 1000 when I was there just 5 years ago.

I also went to what was considered one of the best public high schools in my state. Mine wasn't ranked and random high schools from the state in extremely poor, tiny towns are ranked.

Meanwhile some of the schools that are nationally considered top of the line, Andover, Exeter, and UChicago Lab aren't even listed on the website let alone ranked.
 
I also went to what was considered the best public high school in my state. Mine wasn't ranked and random highschools from the state in extremely poor, tiny towns are ranked.

Meanwhile some of the schools that are nationally considered top of the line, Andover, Exeter, and UChicago Lab aren't even listed on the website let alone ranked.

Same situation. It's definitely a bit weird, but really I shouldn't care any more.
 
In the 1200s. Disagree with that on the fact that literally everyone from the area that graduated from there was far more prepared for college than anyone in their classes

Also imagine if we didn't have to funnel money into charter schools so white people didn't have to deal with minorities how schools might be. Fuck charter schools.
 

TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
This is mostly a ranking of how much money your parents had but I was definitely from the wrong side of the tracks.
I know someone who went to one ranked around 300 and was the poorest student at the school by a huge margin.
 

Hamhock

Neo Member
I went to one of the schools in the top 10! It definitely didn't seem top 10 but it's been awhile. They just threw us in a bunch of AP courses and called it a day. There were some pretty great teachers there though.
 

Dre3001

Member
Wow, just barely missed top 30. My high school was always laughed at in the county as having a reputation of "the smart kids" but I just figured it's because we sucked at sports.

Wouldn't have guessed they were that good.
 

Hamhock

Neo Member
This is mostly a ranking of how much money your parents had but I was definitely from the wrong side of the tracks.
I know someone who went to one ranked around 300 and was the poorest student at the school by a huge margin.

These are public schools so I don't think you have to be well off but it probably doesn't hurt.I might have it wrong though. I know at my school most of the people there weren't well off.
 
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Well mine did better than I expected.

Also I was in the minority in all of those. I'm an engineer with a degree.
 

n64coder

Member
The list is very suspect to me when there are all of these schools in AZ, TX, and FL in the top 100 and hardly any in the northeast.
 

TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
These are public schools so I don't think you have to be well off but it probably doesn't hurt.I might have it wrong though. I know at my school most of the people there weren't well off.

Public schools in wealthier neighborhoods get a lot of money from boosters. There can also be a local tax component.
 
My school was voted a national school of excellence award when I went there. 18 years later and they've got a 55% graduation rate and below 30% in English proficiency. I'm depressed.
 
My problem with rankings like these is that they heavily favor schools that bar low performing students from even entering. My high school was fantastic, but is unranked, and I suspect it's largely because we had a sizable special ed program, combined with a low number of african american and hispanic students (whose performance is also taken into account according to their methodology). I also think the focus on AP is problematic, since my school had less AP courses than a lot of other high schools, but the quality of said courses was much higher. For example, my High school had a higher AP pass rate than the highest ranking school in my state, but apparently that means less than just having people take the exam even if they don't do as well
 

Hamhock

Neo Member
Public schools in wealthier neighborhoods get a lot of money from boosters. There can also be a local tax component.

Ah yeah that's true.

Maybe mine was one of the exceptions but they built it in a low income area and you had to apply to get in so people lived all over the place. I lived like half an hour from it on a good day.
 

Hexa

Member
My school wasn't ranked at all. Well we still managed to beat TJ at an event that one time in Science Olympiad so suck it.
 
1931 in National Rankings with a 96% graduation rate. Not that bad. My high-school was definitely a great experience for me, so I can it's a pretty solid place to go to for education.
 

MIMIC

Banned
I graduated from #57! (as a middle schooler....a few years before it was turned into a high school, lol)

I also went to #47! (for just a week, lol)

EDIT: Wait, those are Ohio rankings :-/
 

kukubrew

Member
Yo, my HS suuuucked.

SCORECARD
College Readiness Index 3.8
AP® Tested 7%
AP® Passed40%
Mathematics Proficiency 9%
English Proficiency 28

Thank God I moved and my kids are in a decent district now. 98% graduation and 36% ready is way better than this crap school.
 

Morlas

Member
Oh sweet my high school did pretty good, it's one of only 2 schools in Alabama with a gold medal and in the top 500 in the nation...not bad

Homewood high school in Homewood btw, and yeah it's pretty diverse and the teachers were mostly all pretty good when i was going there....i definitely liked my time there.
 
So how do the ratings work? There were other HS in our area that had higher grad/college readiness, but they didn't even get a ranking in the state
 
In Denmark, our Gymnasium / HF is sort of like a mix of American high school and college. We have up to 9 or 10th in basic school, and then you do 3-2 years in Gymnasium before University.
I went to several high schools, but I enjoyed my time at Det Fri (The free gymnasium). It was a sort of anarchist far-leftist institution, completely covered in grafitti art everywhere. And I do mean everywhere.


The school was structured as "alternative education". The school board consists of students, and basically everything is decided by the students. There is a head principle and a teacher staff, but they don't decide how the school is structured. The curriculum is set by the state, but the students vote and decide how they want to study and have classes structured.
The school had some of the highest grades on average in all of Denmark despite being seen as "radical".

What impressed me the most about it, it that there was a lot of people there who really was unable to function in the normal school system. People who had all sorts of problems, socially, mentally, physically. But this place gave a lot of room to people, and as a result, nobody really bullied you for being a freak or different. That was really nice about it.
It didn't have a lot of tolerance for anybody who wasn't extremely far-left thou. It was quite a echo chamber, but that was by choice. It's sort of a stronghold in Copenhagen for those who are political and very far left.
 

Piggus

Member
Man, my school's graduation rate really dropped since I was there. Who the hell is running it?. Still got a silver, but should be a lot higher.
 
These rankings are weird. My town is listed as 32.3 on the college readiness, but it is 'unranked' overall; however, when I check out my state's ranking, that college readiness ranking would have it sitting around ~59 in the state and ~1700 overall. There are dozens upon dozens of ranked schools with much worse college readiness scores. I have no idea why it is listed as unranked.

Anyway seems odd to barely see any Massachusetts schools up there when the state consistently ranks top in SAT scores in the country. I know there is more to schooling, but something seems off there.
 
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