The U.S. News & World Report has released its annual rankings of the best public high schools in America after analyzing data on more than 28,000 schools in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The following three high schools in Chester County ranked among the Top 25 in Pennsylvania and rated most impressively on the national scale:

• 306. Conestoga
• 399. Unionville
• 563. Great Valley

To produce this year’s rankings, U.S. News & World Report teamed with North Carolina-based RTI International, a global nonprofit social science research firm.

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The methodology is based on these key principles: that a great high school must serve all of its students well, not just those who are college bound, and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes to show it is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators.

A four-step process determined the best high schools:

• Step 1: The first step determined whether each school’s students were performing better than statistically expected for students in that state.
• Step 2: For schools passing the first step, Step 2 assessed whether their disadvantaged students – black, Hispanic, and low-income – performed at or better than the state average for the least-advantaged students.
• Step 3: For schools passing the first and second step, Step 3 required schools to meet or surpass a benchmark for their graduation rate.
• Step 4: Schools that made it through the first three steps became eligible to be judged nationally on the final step – college-readiness performance – using Advanced Placement test data as the benchmark for success. AP is a College Board program that offers college-level courses at high schools across the country.

Click here to read more about the U.S. News & World Report’s rankings of the best public high schools in America.

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