U.S. News & World Report magazine recently released its 2021 “Best High School” rankings, and several school districts represented by the Council of the Great City Schools topped the list.

For the third time in a row, Charleston County School District’s Academic Magnet High School in South Carolina was ranked the second-best high school out of more than 18,000 public schools that were evaluated nationwide. The Walter Payton College Preparatory High School in Chicago, which ranked 9^th in the country last year, moved up to No. 4 in the 2021 rankings and the School for Advanced Studies in Miami ranked No. 5.

Also, ranking in the top 20 was New York City's Townsend Harris High School at No. 12 and two schools in the Dallas Independent School District: The School for the Talented and Gifted at No. 13 and the Irma Lerma Rangel Young Women’s Leadership School at No. 15. The Julia R. Masterman Secondary School in Philadelphia ranked No. 18 and The Early College at Guilford in Guilford County Schools in Greensboro, N.C., ranked No. 20. 

The U.S. News Best High School rankings include data from 24,000 public high schools in 50 states and the District of Columbia. Schools were ranked on six factors: college readiness, math and reading proficiency, reading and math performance, underserved student performance, college curriculum breadth and graduation rates.  

The newsmagazine also ranked the nation’s Best High Schools for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) based on student’s participation and success in Advanced Placement science and math tests.

Among the schools deemed tops for STEM were The Early College at Guilford in Greensboro, N.C., at No. 2; the Science and Engineering Magnet School in Dallas at No. 3; and The School for the Talented and Gifted in Dallas at No. 10.