Top 30 Schools Districts In New Hampshire For 2020: New Rankings

Philips Exeter Academy is the top-ranked private school in the country, according to new rankings released Monday by Niche. The rankings and review website bestowed that honor in addition to ranking the top school districts in the state. We compiled the top 30 school districts below:

1. SAU 70
2. Oyster River Cooperative School District
3. Portsmouth School District
4. Bedford School District
5. Hollis/Brookline Cooperative School District
6. Windham School District
7. Exeter Region Cooperative School District
8. Hopkinton School District
9. Bow School District
10. Sunapee School District
11. Moultonborough School District
12. Londonderry School District
13. Goffstown School District
14. Salem School District
15. Lebanon School District
16. Profile School District
17. Gilford School District
18. Conway School District
19. Kearsarge School District
20. Concord School District
21. Keene School District
22. Contoocook Valley School District
23. Litchfield School District
24. Milford School District
25. Nashua School District
26. Timberlane School District
27. Newmarket School District
28. Merrimack School District
29. Gorham Randolph Shelburne Cooperative School District
30. Dover School District

>>>Don't see your school district? Niche has the full list here.

Niche looked at more than 94,000 public schools, 4,100 private schools and nearly 11,000 school districts across the country. The rankings are meant to help parents and students find schools that best fit their needs.

“Unlike traditional school rankings, which rely almost exclusively on test scores and academic performance, Niche’s rankings provide a real-life view of what it’s like to attend a given school,” the company said in a news release.

Comments from current students, alumni, and parents are included in the analysis, as well as observations about things like campus life, extracurricular activities, sports options, diversity, and programs for gifted and special needs students.

“Parents and students need more than test-score data,” Luke Skurman, CEO at Niche, said in the news release. “They need to understand what it’s really like to attend a school before they start the application or registration process.”

For the first time, Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, and Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, were ranked the top private and public high schools, respectively, in the nation.

2020 top public high schools:

1. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology
2. Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
3. Walter Payton College Prep
4. Stuyvesant High School
5. Bergen County Academies

2020 top private high schools

1. Phillips Exeter Academy
2. St. Mark’s School of Texas
3. Phillips Academy
4. The College Preparatory School
5. Trinity School

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.