McIntosh High School in Peachtree City is ranked No. 469 in the nation and No. 16 in Georgia in U.S. News and World Report’s listing of the 2014 Best High Schools in the United States.
McIntosh was the only Fayette school to be named in the top 2,000 high schools nationally.
In the Georgia high school rankings, McIntosh was No. 16 in the top 51 schools that were ranked. McIntosh had a 17:1 student/teacher ratio last year, with 48.2 percent of students above the average in college readiness.
To produce the 2014 U.S. News and World Report Best High Schools rankings, U.S. News teamed up with the Washington, D.C.-based American Institutes for Research, one of the largest behavioral and social science research organizations in the world, the magazine said.
Explaining the methodology used, the study began by analyzing 31,242 public high schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. That number was reduced to 19,411 schools, which is the total number of public high schools across the country that had high enough 12th-grade enrollment and sufficient data from the 2011-2012 school year to be eligible for the rankings.
The study used a three-step process to determine America’s best high schools.
The first step determined whether each school’s students were performing better than statistically expected for the average student in the state. The study looked at reading and math results for all students on each state’s high school proficiency tests then factored in the percentage of economically disadvantaged students – who tend to score lower – enrolled at the school to identify the schools that were performing better than statistical expectations.
The second step determined whether the school’s least-advantaged students (black, Hispanic and low-income) were performing better than average for similar students in the state.
The study compared each school’s math and reading proficiency rates for disadvantaged students with the statewide results for these student groups and then selected schools that were performing better than this state average.
Schools that made it through the first two steps became eligible to be judged nationally on the final step – college-readiness performance – using Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate test data as the benchmarks for success, depending on which program was largest at the school.
