Santa Barbara High Schools Make Grade in National Rankings

UPDATE: An earlier version of this story incorrectly contained information about San Marcos High School. All references to San Marcos have been removed.Our apologies to our readers and the writer, Drew Mackie, who had the correct information in his original posting.

Newsweek magazine this week released its rankings of the nation’s top 1,300 public high schools. Two high schools in Santa Barbara county placed in the upper 5% of rated schools, with Santa Barbara High School – which rose to 807, up from 918 last year, and Goleta’s Dos Pueblos High School, was placed at 944, down from 771 last year.

The rankings are determined by the taking the number of all students at a high school who take Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge tests in a given year and then dividing that sum by the number of graduating seniors. The 1,300 schools listed constitute the top 5 percent of public secondary education institutes in the country, according to Newsweek. The survey also takes into account such factors as the percentage of students at these schools who receive federally subsidized meals and an “equity and excellence” percentage – the fraction of students who receive at least one passing grade on an Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate test.

No other high schools in Santa Barbara or San Luis Obispo counties were listed in the Newsweek ranking.

It should be noted that schools with an average SAT score of higher than 1300 are excluded from the list and instead considered “elite” schools. Only one Californian high school made it on this year’s list: Whitney High School in Cerritos.

Newsweek has released this listing since 1998.