Best Nashville-Area High Schools 2018: U.S. News & World Report

Five Tennessee high schools are rated among the best in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report's 2018 high school rankings. The highest-rated school in Tennessee was Central Magnet School in Murfreesboro that ranked 44th nationally.

The 2018 best high school rankings were released on Wednesday and evaluate more than 20,500 public high schools. U.S. News identified schools that best serve all students and assessed how prepared students are for college-level work. Schools are also recognized with gold, silver and bronze medals with gold indicating the greatest level of college readiness.

Three Nashville-area schools received a gold medal. A total of five Tennessee schools received a gold medal, 19 got a silver medal and 82 schools got a bronze medal.

"Top-ranked schools succeed in three main areas: exceeding expectations on state proficiency tests, offering challenging coursework and graduating their students," Anita Narayan, managing editor of Education at U.S. News, said in a press release.

Here's the state's gold medal schools in the Nashville area and where they ranked nationally, according to the 2018 rankings:

Hume Fogg Magnet High School, Nashville, No. 77

Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet School, Nashville, No. 165

Brentwood High School, Brentwood, No. 305

To determine the rankings, U.S. News teamed up with the social science research firm RTI International. A variety of data sources, including the Common Core of Data, College Board and the International Baccalaureate, were used.

A four-step process was used to rank all eligible schools. The first two steps were to determine whether students were performing better than statistically expected in the state and whether minority students were performing at or better than the state average for minority students, which was the second step. The third step required schools to meet or surpass a certain graduation benchmark and the final step was to determine college readiness. (You can read the full methodology here.)

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