America's Best High Schools

There are more than 18,000 public high schools in the United States. What if you could take a snapshot of each one and capture, at a particular moment, what kinds of students were enrolled there and the caliber of the education provided them? If you were to collect these individual snapshots into one huge national yearbook, which high school would be chosen as "Most Likely to Succeed," meaning that it set the best example of how to prepare students to achieve their post-graduation goals?

We've attempted to answer that pivotal question in the following pages, our first ever ranking of America's Best High Schools. Using a formula produced in collaboration with School Evaluation Services, a K-12 data research and analysis business run by Standard & Poor's, we put high schools in 40 states through a three-step analysis. First, we measured how each school's students performed on state tests, adjusting for student circumstances. We next evaluated how well each school's disadvantaged students did. Finally, we looked at whether the school was successful in providing college-level coursework.

The 100 schools that did the best in this analysis earned gold medals. The next 405 schools were awarded silver medals, and an additional 1,086 schools earned bronze.

Like any good photograph, the details of the data gathered for this project reveal a number of fascinating stories. Most notable is the variety among the schools that have earned the highest honor. Our first-place winner, Thomas Jefferson High School in suburban Washington, D.C., picks its students from the children of the nation's leaders. Yet just 10 slots lower, Hidalgo High School on the border of Texas and Mexico has found success educating a student body comprising the children of challenged immigrants. And in Boston, the nation's oldest school carries on an exemplary tradition while a new charter school explores innovations such as housing tutors in dormitories on the third floor of its building.

A good high school can open worlds of opportunity for its students.