Hershey High School has topped the central Pennsylvania region’s rankings once again in the annual U.S. News & World Report Best High School Rankings, which were released Tuesday.
The region’s top three high schools were Hershey High School, Cumberland Valley High School and Camp Hill Senior High School. The following graphic shows the top 10 rated schools from the region.
One Pa. school made the top 10 in the nation out of the 17,901 schools ranked: Julia R. Masterman Secondary School in Philadelphia, a public, magnet school, which means it has specialized curriculum. The school placed eighth in the nation.
In 2024, the school was ranked fourth in the nation and it’s been the highest ranked school in Pennsylvania since 1996.
The rankings come as funding for Pennsylvania’s public schools is in limbo because of a late state budget. A Feb. 7, 2023, Commonwealth Court ruling found that the commonwealth’s funding model was unconstitutional, and state officials still have not found a solution.
The report also ranks public charter schools. The only regional charter to make the list was Capital Area School for the Arts Charter, in downtown Harrisburg, coming in at 112th in the state. The report does rank cyber charters as well, but none broke into the top rankings.
Regionally, the best STEM (Science, technology, engineering and math) school was Cumberland Valley High School, ranking 26th in the state and 432nd nationally.
U.S. News uses state assessments, graduation rates and college-level exams. The data in this edition’s ranking come from third-party sources and pertain to the 2022-2023 school year.
The report includes rankings of high schools nationally, by state, metro area and school district. U.S. News also gathers demographic information.
Of this list’s top 25%:
- 29.2% of schools were in cities and
- 44% of schools were in suburbs.
- 26.8% of schools were located in rural/remote areas
- 53.7% had 25% or more of their students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.
Out of the 25,000 or so high schools nationwide, the list ranks 7,901 of them. Out of the ranked schools, 71.4% had at least a quarter of their students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.
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