Newsweek’s Top Public High Schools 2016: How Will Wisconsin Schools Fare?

WISCONSIN -- Newsweek’s list of the best public high schools in the country will be revealed Thursday morning — and it’s one you’ll want to pay attention to if you care about local-school quality and want to know where Wisconsin schools rank.

We know you see a lot of lists: 10-Most Redneck Towns; 20 Least-Affordable States; Fattest Counties in the United States; Best Cities for People with 2 Kids, 1 Dog but No Cats.

Newsweek’s rankings of the best public high schools in the country stand apart. The school rankings are borne of legitimate research. Newsweek uses legitimate and objective measurements to put together its annual ranking of the country’s best high schools.

And just in time for the start of school, Newsweek is releasing 2016’s list later Thursday morning.

Wisconsin Schools in 2015

Last year, only one Wisconsin High School made the top 100 in Newsweek’s 2015 Rankings. Whitefish Bay High School in Whitefish Bay ranked highest in Wisconsin for 2015, placing 30th in the U.S. You had to go all the way down to Number 200 to find the next-ranked Wisconsin School, Platteville High School.

Will there be changes in the rankings? Newcomers to the upper echelon? Check back with Patch later this morning for the full national and statewide lists as soon as they are released.

So, how did Newsweek come up with the rankings?

Newsweek looked at six measurements and weighted them to achieve a “college readiness index.” The rankings show how well high schools prepare students for college.

Those measurements and their weight are:

1. Holding power: 10 percent
2. Ratio of counselor/full-time equivalent to student enrollment: 10 percent
3. Weighted SAT/ACT: 17.5 percent
4. Weighted AP/IB/dual enrollment composite: 17.5 percent
5. Graduation rate: 20 percent
6. College enrollment rate: 25 percent

In all, 6,477 of the nation’s 15,819 public high schools met the criteria to be considered in Newsweek’s rankings.

Newsweek used school performance data from the National Center for Education Statistics to narrow the list of schools.

Of those 6,477 schools, 4,760 were considered for the overall rankings, while 4,452 made the cut for another list of schools “beating the odds.” (Many schools made both lists.)

For the “beating the odds” rankings, a school’s college readiness scores were adjusted for how they compared against other schools with similar percentages of students eligible for free or reduced lunch.

Patch also will post a list of schools “beating the odds.”

Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria, Virginia, took the top spot in last year’s overall rankings for the second year in a row. New Jersey had six of the top 10 public high schools in the country.

Thomas Jefferson has been a regular powerhouse on previous best schools rankings and puts an emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics classes.

“We’re preparing kids to go into fields that have yet to be invented,” Principal Evan Glazer told Newsweek last year. “We’re really focusing more on skills and an appreciation for STEM. But if they decide to become journalists, we convey that they have a unique knowledge base in STEM. They would be able to contribute to articles on energy, the environment, and government policy on those important issues.”