Newsweek's Best High Schools 2012

It's that time again.  I wrote about this last year here: Newsweek's Best Public High Schools in America Newsweek released their list today.  America's Best High Schools 2012 Upper St. Clair ranked #244, while Mt. Lebanon was "close behind" at No. 518.

Other southwestern Pennsylvania high schools that made the list are:

• No. 488 Fox Chapel Area
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• No. 624 North Allegheny 
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• No. 627 Pine-Richland 
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• No. 648 Quaker Valley
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• No. 662 Hampton
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Newsweek's Best Public High Schools in America

Newsweek came out with their list of top ranking high schools in the US, as they have for over ten years. Spoiler alert: Mt. Lebanon didn't make the cut, but neither did Upper St. Clair.

These are challenging times for secondary education. Cash-strapped school districts are cutting back; No Child Left Behind mandates test results; parents and students stress unabated. NEWSWEEK, which has been ranking the top public high schools in America for more than a decade, revamped its methodology this year in hopes of highlighting solutions. We enlisted a panel of experts—Wendy Kopp of Teach For America, Tom Vander Ark of Open Education Solutions (formerly executive director for education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), and Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford professor of education and founder of the School Redesign Network—to develop a yardstick that fully reflects a school’s success turning out college-ready (and life-ready) students. To this end, each school’s score is comprised of six components: graduation rate (25%), college matriculation rate (25%), AP tests taken per graduate (25%), average SAT/ACT scores (10%), average AP/IB/AICE scores (10%), and AP courses offered (5%). (For more information on how these rankings were tabulated, see our Full Methodology.)

Read more: Newsweek's America's Best High Schools 2011 to see which Pittsburgh Schools made the list.