Unified School District 456 is proud to announce that Marais des Cygnes Valley High School has been named a U.S. News and World Report "Best High School" for 2020!
According to U.S. News and World Report's rankings, Marais des Cygnes Valley High School was:
- #1 in Topeka, KS Metro Area Schools
- #18 in Kansas High Schools
- #2,644 in National Rankings
Marais des Cygnes Valley High School's rankings and overview can be found by clicking HERE.
According to U.S. News and World Report:
A great high school educates all students from different social and economic backgrounds, exposing them to challenging coursework on the path to graduation. The highest ranked U.S. public schools in U.S. News & World Report's 2020 Best High Schools rankings are those whose attendees demonstrated outstanding outcomes above expectations in math and reading state assessments, passed a diverse array of college-level exams and graduated in high proportions.
In coordination with North Carolina-based RTI International, a global nonprofit social science research firm, U.S. News ranked approximately 17,790 public high schools out of more than 24,000 reviewed. This is the count of public high schools that had a 12th grade enrollment of 15 or greater, or otherwise had sufficient enrollment in other high school grades during the 2017-2018 school year to be analyzed.
We did this by summing their weighted scores across six indicators of school quality, then computed for each school a single zero to 100 overall score reflective of performance across these metrics. The overall scores depict how well each school did on a national percentile basis.
Below is the description of each of the six ranking indicators and their weights used to produce the overall score:
College Readiness (30%): The College Readiness Index, or CRI, is measured by the proportion of a school's 12th graders that took and passed AP or IB exams.
College Curriculum Breadth (10%): The College Curriculum Breadth Index, or CCBI, is calculated among a school's 2017-2018 12th graders from the percentage who took and the percentage who passed multiple AP or IB exams.
Math and Reading Proficiency (20%): Each state issues standardized tests measuring student proficiency in subjects related to mathematics and reading. The math and reading proficiency indicator is a simple measure of schools' student performance on these assessments.
Math and Reading Performance (20%): This ranking indicator also is derived from math and reading state assessments. But in this case, the total assessment scores are compared with what U.S. News predicted for a school with its demographic characteristics in its state.
Underserved Student Performance (10%): This is a measure assessing learning outcomes only among black, Hispanic and low-income students. This evaluates how well this underserved subgroup scored on state assessments compared with the average for non-underserved students among schools in the same state.
Graduation Rate (10%): Among students who entered ninth grade in the 2013-2014 academic year, this measure is the proportion who graduated four years later by 2017-2018.
Congratulations to Marais des Cygnes Valley High School, its' students, its' staff, its' parents, and all others involved in making the building one of the "Best High Schools" in the Topeka area, the state of Kansas and the nation. Keep up the good work!