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.

Top 10 High Schools:

1.Thomas Jefferson High School
Fairfax County, Alexandria, Virginia

2.Pacific Collegiate Charter
Santa Cruz County, Santa Cruz, California

3.International Baccalaureate Program
Polk County, Bartow, Florida

4.Oxford Academy
Orange County, Cypress, California

5.International School
King County, Bellevue, Washington

6.Pine View School for Gifted
Sarasota County, Osprey, Florida

7.High Technology High School
Monmouth County, Lincroft, New Jersey

8.Design & Architectural Senior High
Miami-Dade County, Miami, Florida

9.Stanton College Preparatory
Duval County, Jacksonville, Florida

10.Preuss School Ucsd
San Diego County, La Jolla, California