The Nation's Most Elite Public High Schools

Jay Matthews:

I am ranking them by one of the most common, and to me most annoying, measures of high school worth--average total reading and math SAT scores. Those test results are most closely tied to the income of the families that raise these fine students. There is something of that relationship at these schools too. But once you get this many bright students together, SAT becomes largely irrelevant, since they have all gone far beyond the 10th-grade reading comprehension and math puzzles that make up those exams. Notice, for instance, the surprises. Some very well-known elite schools have much lower average SATs than some others. Some selective high schools with terrific reputations, like Lowell in San Francisco, do not have high enough SAT averages to make the Public Elites list and so remain on the main list. It shows how little significance SAT numbers have.

I am still amazed that there are high schools whose average scores would be high enough to get any student who got that score, with a little luck, into the Ivy League. Our rule is if a non-traditional school's average is 1300, or 29 or above on the ACT, it goes on the Public Elites list. We picked 1300 and 29 because those scores are just above the highest average scores of any regular enrollment public school in the country.

The list:

1. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (SAT 1495)
2. University Laboratory High School, Urbana, Ill. (SAT 1409)
3. Stuyvesant High School, New York (SAT 1405)
4. High Technology High, Lincroft, NJ (SAT 1395)
5. Hunter College High School, New York (SAT 1395)
6. Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics, Oklahoma City (SAT 1383)
7. Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, Aurora, Ill. (SAT 1373)
8. South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Mathematics, Hartsville, S.C. (SAT 1362)
9. North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, Durham, N.C. (SAT 1356)
10. Bergen County Academies, Hackensack, N.J. (SAT 1355)
11. Whitney High School, Cerritos, Calif. (SAT 1343)
12. Maggie L. Walker Governor's School for Government and International Studies, Richmond, Va. (SAT:1340)
13. Jefferson County International Baccalaureate, Irondale, Ala. (SAT 1315)
14. Union County Magnet High School, Scotch Plains, N.J. (SAT 1314)
15. International Community School, Kirkland, Wash. (SAT 1309)
16. University High School, Tucson, Ariz. (SAT 1304)
17. Bronx High School of Science, New York (SAT 1301)

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 24, 2008 7:44 AM
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