ICYMI: West Chester Has Two Schools Among Newsweek's Top 500 Public High Schools In Country

In Newsweek’s latest list of its top 500 public high schools across the nation for 2015, West Chester is represented twice.

West Chester East High School was ranked 420th, while West Chester Bayard Rustin High School came in at No. 455.

Newsweek released its annual list on Wednesday, just in time for the start of the school year.

Pennsylvania had 21 schools on the list of the top 500 across the nation, with Conestoga High, in Berwyn, ranked the highest among them.

Nearby New Jersey has six of the top 10 public high schools in the country, while Virginia, Michigan, California and Illinois had one each.

In Pennsylvania, the southeastern part of the state was very well-represented on the list, with seven schools from Montgomery County, four schools from Chester County, four from Bucks County, and two from Delaware County making the top 500.

See the full rankings here.

Here’s the full list of the 21 best schools in the state, according to Newsweek:

51. Conestoga High School, Berwyn

64. Lower Merion HS, Ardmore

111. Council Rock HS North, Newtown

131. North Allegheny Senior High School, Wexford

134. Franklin Regional Senior High School, Murrysville

136. Jenkintown Middle/High School, Jenkintown

168. Garnet Valley HS, Glen Mills

188. Harriton Senior High School, Rosemont

201. Quaker Valley HS, Leetsdale

208. Upper Dublin HS, Fort Washington

234. Wissahickon Senior High School, Ambler

246. Peters Township High School, Mcmurray

290. Lower Moreland HS, Huntingdon Valley

333. Council Rock HS South, Holland

342. Owen J. Roberts HS, Pottstown

392. New Hope-Solebury HS, New Hope

420. West Chester East HS, West Chester

440. Haverford Senior High School, Havertown

454. Abington Heights HS, Clarks Summit

455. West Chester Bayard Rustin HS, West Chester

462. Downingtown HS East Campus, Exton

473. Central Bucks HS-West, Doylestown

The rankings were compiled using several metrics, including graduation rate, college enrollment rate, SAT and ACT scores, AP and IB scores and participation, teacher-student ratio and dropout rates.

“Some factors are more important, especially since our rankings focus on college readiness,” Jim Impoco, editor in chief of Newsweek, told Patch via email. “We place emphasis on criteria like college enrollment and graduation rate since we know that those are some of the biggest indicators of whether students are prepared for college.”

This year’s rankings were weighted by:

§ Enrollment Rate—25 percent

§ Graduation Rate—20 percent

§ Weighted AP/IB/Dual Enrollment composite—17.5 percent

§ Weighted SAT/ACT composite—17.5 percent

§ Change in student enrollment between 9th-12th grades, to control for dropout rates—10 percent

§ Counselor-to-Student Ratio—10 percent

“The top 20 schools on the ‘America’s Top High Schools’ are neck and neck. They all have perfect or near-perfect college enrollment and graduation rates,” Impoco said. “You start to see more variation as you look further down the list and also when you look at the factors that have less weight, like test scores.”