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By Lookout Staff
May 24 -- Both Santa Monica and Malibu High Schools
have been ranked among the nation’s top 200 public high
schools, according to a report published in Newsweek
magazine this week.
Newsweek’s article, titled “Top
of the Class,” ranked Malibu High School at number
176, and Santa Monica High School at number 192.
The rankings were based on the number of Advanced Placement
tests taken by twelfth graders at 1,257 public high schools
last year, divided by the number of graduating seniors.
“Just taking the course and the test mattered more
than the score because even struggling AP students learned
a great deal,” wrote Jay Mathews, who authored the report.
School District officials said a combination of factors contributed
to the high rankings.
“This report shows that (district) schools have the
perfect ingredients for success,” Superintendent Dianne
Talarico wrote in a statement released by the District Wednesday.
Those ingredients are a “high caliber professional
leadership at the school sites, students who reach for and
attain academic achievement, and involvement from the parents
and community,” Talarico said.
“We are extremely proud of our schools and the level
of achievement they produce,” the superintendent wrote.
The top two ranked schools are in Dallas -- Talented and
Gifted High School and Science/Engineering Magnet High School.
The two Texas schools were followed by Stanton College Prep
in Jacksonville, Florida; Jefferson County IBS in Irondale,
Alabama, and Suncoast Community High School in Riviera Beach,
Florida.
The only California school to make the top ten was Preuss
UCSD in La Jolla, which ranked ninth.
Newsweek excluded 21 “high performers” from the
list, because “so many of their students score well
above the average on the SAT and ACT.”
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