U.S. News & World Report recently released its 2020 edition of “Best High Schools,” ranking six schools in districts represented by the Council of the Great City Schools in the top 10 of more than 17,700 public schools evaluated nationwide.

Charleston County School District’s Academic Magnet High School in South Carolina was ranked No. 2 on the list. The School for Advanced Studies in Miami ranked No. 4, followed by New York City’s Townsend Harris High School ranked No. 5 and The School for Talented and Gifted in Dallas ranked No. 6. 

Also on the list was Walter Payton College Preparatory High School in Chicago, ranked No. 9, followed by Irma Lerma Rangel Young Women's Leadership School in Dallas ranked No. 10. 

Four big-city schools ranked in the top 20. The newsmagazine ranked Long Beach Unified School District’s California Academy of Mathematics and Science No. 11, Julia R. Masterman Secondary School in Philadelphia No. 16, and the Science and Engineering Magnet School in Dallas No. 17. 

High schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia were evaluated focusing on six factors: college readiness, reading and math proficiency, reading and math performance, underserved student performance, college curriculum breadth and graduation rates. College readiness measured participation and performance on Advanced Placement and IB exams. 

"The Best High Schools rankings provide the most comprehensive, data-based information on nearly every public high school in the country," said Anita Narayan, managing editor of education at U.S. News. "Families can use this information to see how their local schools compare on graduation rates and state assessments, as well as academic performance by students.” 

The Best High Schools rankings include data on a variety of factors, such as enrollment, student diversity, participation in free and reduced-price lunch programs, graduation rates and the results of state assessments. 

U.S. News also ranked the Best High Schools for STEM, (science, technology, engineering and math) based on students' participation and success on Advanced Placement science and math test results. Of the 250 schools on this list, all were required to be in the top 1,000 of the overall national rankings to be eligible.

The Early College at Guilford in Greensboro, N.C., was No. 4, Science and Engineering Magnet School in Dallas was No. 7 and The School for the Talented and Gifted in Dallas was No. 9.