U.S. News and World Report: Ohio’s Best High Schools

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The only Ohio school that made it into the top 100 of U.S. News and World Report’s annual ranking of America’s best high schools is Walnut Hills High School, a selective public school in the Cincinnati school district.

Farther down the list, outside of the top 100, are about 111 other Ohio high schools, including:

• Bexley High School – Bexley school district;
• Indian Hill High School – Indian Hill school district;
• Wyoming High School – Wyoming school district; and
• Dublin Jerome High School – Dublin school district.

No Ohio charter schools made it onto U.S. News’ list of the best American high schools.

The U.S. News rankings look at three factors:

• How students do on reading and math standardized tests compared to students statewide and compared to how they’d be expected to do, given their school’s poverty level;
• How black, Hispanic and low-income students perform on state reading and math tests compared to their peers statewide;
• How many student took either Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams and how well they did on those exams.

That’s different from how Ohio builds its own school rankings. Ohio rankings look only at how well students do on all state standardized tests. They don’t take family income, race, ethnicity or AP/IB tests into account.

That means that Walnut Hills is number 1 in Ohio in U.S. News’ ranking and number 32 in the Ohio Department of Education draft ranking.

But some school administrators of schools that landed on U.S. News list say the list isn’t always based on accurate information. The principal of a Las Vegas-area high school on the list says that it’s “cool” that his school made the list, “but the information it was based on was incorrect:”

As first reported by the Las Vegas Sun, the rankings published online show Green Valley has 477 students and 111 teachers, a 4 to 1 ratio. They also show the school has a 100 percent pass rate on the Advanced Placement exam. Horn said Green Valley actually has 2,850 students and a student-teacher ratio closer to 24 to 1. The school has a 64 percent pass rate on the exam.

Robert Morse, director of data research with U.S. News and World Report, said the publication is aware of the discrepancy. ”We’re looking into it,” he said.