U.S. News & World Report released its annual high school rankings in April, highlighting the top-performing high schools in the nation. We report this story as the 2024-2025 school year begins. The top five:
- BASIS Peoria (charter), Basis Charter Schools Inc., Peoria, Ariz.
- Signature School, Signature School Inc., Evansville, Ind.
- Tesla STEM High School, Lake Washington School District, Redmond, Wash.
- Julia R. Masterman Secondary School, Philadelphia (Pa.) City School District
- Payton College Preparatory High School, Chicago (Ill.) Public Schools
The news magazine’s rankings include data on nearly 25,000 public high schools in 50 states and the District of Columbia. Almost 18,000 schools were ranked based on six factors, including their performance on state assessments and how well they prepare students for college.
The site also filters the rankings by the “best” public and private high schools by state. (Here are the rankings for public high schools in Maryland and Illinois.) The magazine writes that the rankings are provided “to give an unbiased look at how well schools serve their students and help you make informed decisions about your child’s education. We also want to recognize high-performing schools and inspire educators and municipalities to improve.”
Editorial
Although rankings like those provided by the news magazine are valuable in terms of spotting schools that have high test scores, high graduation rates, and high college preparatory scores, this is a rather narrow metric for evaluating the quality of a high school. It doesn’t capture the full range of student abilities, skills, or potential, and these metrics are notorious for overlooking more essential factors in today’s artificially intelligent, Google-driven world, such as creativity, critical thinking, and social-emotional development.
Furthermore, one of the magazine’s most important metrics is statewide test scores, which tend to be biased high at a school where affluent families send their children. Higher test scores among these children correlate with better resources, access to test preparation, and more stable home environments.
Although I would prefer to eliminate standardized tests as a proxy for school quality, magazines like U.S. News & World Report continue to rely heavily on standardized test scores year after year. This inspires teachers to “teach to the test” to achieve higher scores on those tests, which hinders their ability to offer students a well-rounded education and limits students’ exposure to broader learning experiences and critical thinking opportunities.
The vicious cycle of school funding makes this situation worse. Schools that are already high-performing are often private and charter schools, especially in states that favor charter schools, which receive public funds, and vouchers, which provide tax credits for parents who choose to send their children to private schools. This causes low-performing schools to be under-resourced. They continue to struggle at that point, and scores go down even more.