Two Fayette high schools,

Starr's Mill and Sandy Creek, were named recently to a Newsweek magazine

ranking of the nation's top public high schools.

Using a ratio based on the

number of students taking Advance Placement or International Baccalaureate

college credit tests divided by the number of graduating seniors in 2002,

the study concludes Starr's Mill ranks 425th in the nation and Sandy Creek

comes in at 672.

The 739 public schools that

made the list have the "strongest AP or IB programs in the country,"

wrote Jay Matthews in the June 2 edition of Newsweek. "Each of them

is in the top four percent of all American high schools (when) measured

this way."

The study excluded public magnate

schools that admit more than half of their students based on grades or

test scores, and which frequently come out on top of any ranking of schools

because they have the better crop of students.

"The index is designed

to identify schools that challenge average students and does not work

well with schools that have few or no average students," Matthews

explained in the article, which reports on the rapidly growing popularity

in college-level courses in America's high schools.

More than 1 million students

in 14,000 high schools nationwide took 1,750,000 AP exams this spring,

a 10 percent increase over last year and twice as many as in 1996.

In some parts of the country,

educators are pushing for a requirement that all students take AP courses

in order to graduate, Matthews reports.

Cobb County's Walton High School

was the highest Georgia school on the list, coming in at 139th.

International Academy of Bloomfield

Hills, Mich., ranks as the nation's best high school, according to the

Newsweek survey, while two Jacksonville, Fla., schools Stanton College

Prep and Paxon are second and third, respectively.

The Alabama School of Fine

Arts in Birmingham was fourth.

The print edition of Newsweek

lists just the top 100 schools, but the full list is available online

at www.msnbc.com/news/nw-life_front.asp.