50 smartest high schools

Why is the title of this article '50 smartest high schools' if only 10 are listed?

Why isn't Newton High on the list? I remember a time when it was on the top 3 in the East Coast.

Westford Acadamy should be in here. It's a wicked good school! My big brother loves it! Maybe that's why he comes home with wedgies from the tough guys.

Carl,
Didn't you read the piece?? The whole article is about Newton! READ before you post my friend!

Glad to see Bedford High is still so "High" on the list!!!!

Where are the other 40? Obviously the webmaster did not attend one of these fine schools.

Where are the other 90 schools?????!!!!!

The list posted by the author is by "cost efficiency rating" not by "academic performance". The ranking by academic performance is as follows:
Brookline
Lincoln-Sudbury
Weston
Boston Latin
Newton South
Dover-Sherborn
Weymouth
Wayland
Newton North

However, even these are all relative as it is unclear if there are per capita adjustments for the overall size of the school...easier to offer more AP classes when you have many more students...nor does it necessarily account for the colleges that students are accepted to...e.g. if one school has more ivy league acceptances than another but fewer acceptances overall, is it a better or worse school?

At the end of the day (and this is from someone who lives in a town that is in that top 10 list), if you're relying on Boston magazine to know how good your town's school is, then you need to become more involved with your school system and your child's education. Schools are made better by good teachers, good facilities, and good opportunities for students to learn from and teach each other. Higher education itself is made greater by parents who take the time to be involved with their child's education, understand what they are setting out to accomplish, and remain active throughout the school year.

Nice of them to show us the other 40 schools. Looks like this blogger did not attend any of the schools on the list.

I went to Sharon High School- graduated in 2004. In my opinion, it is highly overrated. Although I left with a basic skill set that allowed me to succeed in college, the people I met in college had been exposed to more challenging and diverse curriculums in their high schools. I think a surprisingly large number of students at SHS get outside tutoring. This skews our test score to tax dollar spent ratio. Aside from a handful of stand out teachers, this school continually settles for mediocrity from its students.

Are you going to list the other 40 smartest high schools ???

It doesn't get any more wealthy, white suburban than this list...

I was surprised that Lexington High School wasn't among the top 50 in the state. Does anyone have an explanation why it wasn't?

why would "smartest" schools need to show the good use of tax dollars? at the end of the day, the smartest kids are those who perform best. not perform best because the town spends its tax dollars the best. typical that we punish the kids because the adults can't get their (act) together.

Did you control by SES? It is well known that academic performance is strongly associated to socioeconomic status (family income, wealth, parents' education) and therefore you could eventually be listing the schools from some of the richiest towns instead of those towns that really break the SES divide and give their students a plus.

Where's Ayer? I misremembered.....

-Roger

My daughter went from Boston Latin to an Ivy League university. She was surprised to find that most of her classmates, in addition to taking honors and AP classes, actually enjoyed their high school years. Most---okay, truth in packaging->>>--teachers at BLS shouldn't be within a mile of a kid. They are either in for the three month vacation (told to me by two math teachers and a history teacher) or are sadists who love to make kid's lives miserable.

It's all a scam.

Uxbridge High baby! Where's that at?

It seemed like some towns were excluded such as Lexington, Reading, N. Reading. Did they not provide data or something?

I am absolutely appalled that Duxbury High School is not in the top 3 let alone the top 10 of this list! It is items such as these that make think about sending my two boys Trevor and Tripper to Tabor Academy (which has a grand sailing program, really grand). That is all for now, Blair and I are off to the neighborhood lobster bake.

Yes, give the other 40

The school should'nt be taking all the credit. These towns are all wealthy and most people that live here are well educated people. Do you think the son of a ceo is not going to be very smart. These pupils in the area make the school. It should also be broken down per capita.

Gee, I don't miss Mass. My family and I moved to the midwest to a very affordable community and the best schools around. If Massachusetts doesn't change things around and make education more affordable the smart and able ones will continue to leave. This will leave only the haves and the have nots behind.
My situation...we needed a bigger home and a better school system. We were living amoungst the good people of Lynn. I wanted affordability and great schools which Massachusettes can't provide. Now we own a house for just over $200,000 and have no schooling worries for our 3 children just entering school. The house would be over 500,000 in a good community in Mass.
I was a life resident of Mass. I would have loved to stay but couldn't.

Good luck people of Mass,
Peter

Sorry, but I'm a little confused. Both the individual and combined SAT scores which are listed for Boston Latin School students are the absolute highest of any public high school in the state. Why does that rank the school only the 4th best academically?

Look on the boston magazine site.

bostonmagazine.com/best_high_school_chart

Wow. I don't know what they were thinking not including Acton-Boxborough, Lexington, and Newton N/S high schools in this list. Newton North obviously has to spend, but it does it well. And Acton-Boxborough has the highest acceptance rate to Dartmouth College of any high school in the United States yet it's in the bottom 25% in Mass. for how many tax dollars it receives.

Looks like the schools were not controlled for SES. Without controlling for SES the list doesn't make any sense as it is well documented that children from wealthy households do better in school and will do well, generally, wherever they go to school. Can't believe this made the top of the e-mail list. All this story is about is that if you live in a community that has a very high median house price you have a good school. Surprise.

BTW, Weston who is on the list was listed just a couple of years ago as an underperforming school according to the NCLB standards.

What about Lynn?

Well, if the listis based on academic achievement, my guessis that Lexington High School did not receive the top academic scores. Seems basic to me.

private schools should rate no? they cost less to the public?

These 10 academic stars sound correct to me. Someone mentioned
Lexington High - I think 20 / 30 years ago it may have been a good school, but since then I think it's more legacy than fact. And from an efficiency point of view, Lexington would not even rank being so corrupt and fat.

Brookline
Lincoln-Sudbury
Weston
Boston Latin
Newton South
Dover-Sherborn
Weymouth
Wayland
Newton North

As an exam school, Boston Latin essentially gets to cherry pick its students- Boston magazine should have disallowed them on that reason alone.

The fact that BLS only managed the score averages that it did speaks volumes to the deficiencies of the Boston public school system.

Why can't you list the private/Catholic schools... we pay taxes just like anyone else and we get to pay more to go to school, actually we pay taxes on community services that we don't even use.

I agree with the posters about the oversimplification of the data, failure to account for socioeconomics and whether calling the list "smartest" students is accurate. To measure smartest students (and communities) would mean doing the most with the least, however that might be gauged. On that note, way to go Weymouth and to a lesser extent Brookline- truly diverse populations and still making it to the top. There must be a combination of great teachers and involved parent(s). The rest of the districts are really no surprise and the snob affect is really out of control though. People seem to see it more as a way to look down on others than what's best for their kids, etc. I want my kids to be educated, not classist. I'll be sending my kids to decent public schools and backing it up with parental involvement.

Did they totally disregard the fact that Western Mass. also exists, and, amazingly enough, has intelligent students? Very nice research, very all-encompassing.

Boston Magazine is trying to make a point about the cost of a good education in a town. That is why it is not ranking only on achievement. There is an explanation at the top of their chart.

If you want to look at every school in Massachusetts, see the Department of Education site.

Do schools influence where you want to live? Do you look at their cost as well as the achievement of the children who go there?

Xaverian Brothers High School??? Hello??? I graduated in '04 and I got the best education I could've asked for!!

CC you're the best!

Ah yes Lexington High - so over rated -- so unworthy. I speak as a parent -- kindergarten to high school.

$180 million? The good folks in Newton will be delighted by the $17.5 million (at least) savings over the most recent estimates.

...and the student classes these towns send to local private schools are exponentially smarter than the kids in their town's public high school.

Didn't the Globe itself rate Acton-Boxborough at the top a year or so?

I know, Yvonne, it's horrible that Boston magazine ignored the part of the state that's so far west it's not even Worcester.

Just horrible.

What about the solid schools out in the Berkshires????? Western Mass always gets the short end of the stick!! lame

Boston Public Schools spends more per pupil then most on the list. The question to ask yourself is why do the kids score so poorly. The answer is lack of education as a priority and lack of parental support. This is the real issue between city and suburban schools. Back in the day, Chelsea, Everett, Revere, Boston, Brockton, Lowell, etc. turned out well-educated, hungry for the American Dream kids. Why? The parents knew education was the key to success and Mom and Dad knew you had to work hard to get places -Even though life was hard. What has changed and why. This is the real question. Throwing more money at a school system is not the answer - that is clear.

bl weston and ds were the only schools ranked top 65 nationally

To Sebastian Dangerfield, BLS may get to cherry pick its students from a large population, but there are many many more poorer students in the Boston school system than there are in places like Brookline, Weston, Newton etc.

That being said, I'm a BLS graduate (along with my brother, father and uncle) and I think the school is overrated. The curriculum was (and still is) quite rigid and old fashioned. I had lots of crappy teachers there too. I would never in a million years send my daughter there.

To Lance:

Here's a book for you: Shame of the Nation by Jonathan Kozol.
You're right, it would be absolutely wonderful if there was more parental involvement at inner city schools. And it would also be great if I were Tom Brady!
The fact that parents stink or for various reasons, many not their own fault, cannot join the PTA or are intimidated because of their own experiences, does not mean their children deserve to be shafted. I sense some serious blinders on you, my friend, regarding the history of Boston over the past fifty years. Kids who have been dumped on require more money to educate than kids whose families can afford tutors and high property taxes. It's not complicated--just hard to admit.

Sammy

Where is Acton-Boxboro? :o

The liberals don't want you to just look at "test scores" and other tangible evidence that learning is taking place. Liberals want you to look at other intangibles that take attention off the fact most teachers don't "teach"!! While students in India and China crank out more and more engineers, computer science majors and other high intelligence related jobs, our public schools are cranking out Walmart, McDonalds and Government beauracrats that don't speak english, can barely read, nor follow directions and lack basic skills. I am tired of teacher unions crying for more money when that is NOT the problem. The problem is teachers don't teach and we have to many beauracrats and not enough folks actually doing real tangible work

I went to Lexington High. I feel I learned real good. I would probably learn less if I attended boston school.

It's in Acton-Boxboro.

I am a college admissions officer - have been for 25 years. I have visited all of the schools listed - and most of the other high schools in the state. I truely believe that it not what high school your child attends that is important - it is a combination of what your child does while they are in school - and what YOU do as a parent to support your child.

Fuji Fulgueras

The absolute neglect of the western half of the state here is appalling. How about the SouthCoast? Oh that's right, if you can't afford to live within 495 in Mass, you really don't have a fighting chance.

Scores alone do not determine the academic quality of a school - I am responding to someone who is confused by this fact. If SAT and other scores were the only
criteria used, the list of schools would probably be different and you would be measuring something else. It's not even clear what these tests measure, since
in most fields of endeavor the highest achievers are rarely teachers and academics (and it is basically these people who design these tests)

More messed up information. This is what happens with media consolidation and outsourced journalism.

To all the Western Mass apologists: BM's goal was to rate the top High Schools in the area. Not the state, the area around Boston, since it it, well, Greater Boston. I do think they should include Western Mass schools, but that is not what they are after. I think a different agency or company would be better suited and more willing to analyze all that data.

By the way, I'm a Newton South (honor roll, but let's forget that) student -- it s a very very good school no doubt, it's just embarrassing the filthy wealth in this town and how it is wasted. My family is "middle class" -- at least compared to the majority here -- and I wish this are were more affordable and not so damn full of mansions and pure snobs. I don't know what to really take out of this study - my opinions are mostly formed through athletic rivalries and general area stereotypes! :)
Seriously though, don't accept this as gospel, there is so much to a school than its "Cost Effectiency Ranking." Though all I can say from experience is that Newton South, and I would assume North have very good, diverse, enriching educations and generally translate well to college. I would assume many others on this list in Greater Boston and Western Mass do too. Too bad we suck at football.

Obviously since Tewksbury Memorial High School is listed...they arent taking into account building that the students are educated in as a factor of "best High School"...seeing that it is basically a one story warehouse in which during the winter years students can only walk down certain hallways because the danger of the snow caving in the roof.

How pathetic this whole notion of ranking educational institutions has become.

COME ON DOWN!!!

Wouldn't the "50 smartest high schools" be those that sent grads to the best colleges/universities? Lexington would certainly top that list.

Where is Methuen High on this list? It's wicked awesome and was even featured on Entertainment Tonight on night back in the day. Who even knows where Sharon is?

This list seems a bit off..According to the attached chart, Acton Boxboro produced the highest test scores on it and cost about 30% less per student than any other town on the top ten list.

Well, at least 3/4 of the comments here are proof positive of our state's dire need for better schools.

Weymouth High # 7 for academic performance. Wow and we didn't even need an override to accomplish that!

These towns have the best schools, no doubt about it. More money, better teachers, better facilities, and more involved parents.

You can bash and hate them all you want, but the people who earn and pay the money to live in these towns expect every resource available for thier children, and that is what they get.

And somebody else made a good point. Many families in these towns actually pay 20k-50k a year (per child) for private schools that excel even more. So, in these towns, many of the top performing and driven students arent even on the list.

It would be interesting to see where my town is in the next 50.

It's actually just in Acton.

There are 3 types of people in the world. People who can count, and people who can't.

With regards to the lack of schools from outside 495 that is probably because it is 'Boston Magazine' not 'MA Magazine' and therefore would only include the Greater Boston area.

BLS is the oldest public school in the country. No one outside of Brookline has heard of Brookline High. Everyone in the country has heard of Latin. Why do people get so jealous about not having gone to BLS?

first off, the list is 141 schools. Any omissions (like Lexington) are likely due more to lack of data than lack of success. They are ranking the top and the bottom.

Second, this ranking is moronic, because it doesn't take the starting population into account in any way. Demographics are a much better predictor of success than the school system. The real predictor is how much parents care about education; places like Newton, Concord, Lexington, Andover, etc. are filled with families that value education. The high schools in those places could do nothing and many of those towns would still outperform other communities with less educated and/or committed families.

Te

Everyone needs to RELAX!!!!! This article is not the end all be all. It is nice to see Bedford High on the list though... GO BUCS!

Durfee High in Fall River should be in the top 50. The school has made great strides in the last couple of years.

What a shock! The wealthiest towns in Mass have the best schools....

Fuji-

I respectfully disagree. Are you saying that you would treat a kid who got A's at Milton Academy as one who got A's at Milton High? No way....I agree that a kid should be judged for doing the best with what he has been offered in the way of a school system but the academic rigor of one institution over another is a KEY factor. An A at Milton High is not the same as an A at Milton Academy.

And no I did not go to Milton Academy but had one son suffer thru Milton High and sent the other 2 to private schools based on that awful event.

The Boston Globe newspaper has a large circulation throughout the state; however, it often neglects to recognize cities and towns outside of 495. That's fine but let the reader know that the survey or data it's presenting is not statewide.

Start by changing the title of this news piece to: 50 Smartest High Schools in Eastern Massachusetts. Better than that: 50 Smartest High School Students in Eastern Massachusetts.

We moved to southwest Florida in 2004. We were concerned about leaving a great school in Mass., but found many advantages in our new school. My children are taking and scoring well on AP's and enjoy year round outdoor sports.

Of course there are many struggling Florida public schools, but moving here has expanded our appreciation for what lies beyond 128 and 495.

Where is Marblehead High School along with the other 40 schools

Lynnfield high school.....????

What type of article is this? Now I am not a mathematician. The article is a statistical nightmare. They list the top 10. What were the figures they used to calculate these top 10? Could the top 100 be .0001 percent worse off than the top 10? Could the first 200? I believe you need to have a median and a standard deviation to have a better picture of how schools are doing. But again I am not a mathematician.

To Sammy & Jeff - When Tom Payzant took over the BPS he decried the fact that there were too many administrators. Too many people not having direct contact with the children! What's he do? Smaller schools! Instead of one headmaster in a building, you now have three or four, plus assistant headmasters. I noticed none of the small schools made the list.
Try to teach when you have a pin-head adminstrator glorifyig himself in AP scores and numbers. Who cares if the student has the background to master the AP curriculum? I want numbers! Force them into the class and if they fail, it's the fault of the teacher.

I went to Boston Latin and I got a great education. There are definitely some very bad teachers in the mix (especially now) who don't do their jobs but I truly believe the "old-fashioned" curriculum and discipline really makes a difference. It is also what a student puts in that makes the education. There are definitely students that just complain all six (or 4) years there instead of putting in more effort. They should have gone to a different HS then. Both my sisters and I attended BLS and I am proud to say that BLS is a great school.

There is only one one word for this survey - kludge. I can only imagine someone at Boston Magazine trying to piece together a new way to list good schools. After all, year after year there is not much difference between the list of the best school districts. The problem is that this survey relies on data that may or may not be up to date (Their own disclaimer), and the study uses metrics that don't seem to match the rankings - i.e. Boston Latin having the best test scores and is still only ranked as number 4 in academics. When doing a model spreadsheet - this should have been a red flag that something was not right.

Also the idea that it is possible to measure the success of an education program by trying to determine how well money is spent is a difficult exercise at best. Things that can greatly impact a budget such as Special Ed, deferred maintenance, and retirement can great skew numbers from year to year and cannot possibly be accounted for.

While an interesting article, it is not really of much utility.

Rona -- you obviously didn't read the article in Boston magazine carefully enough: you've listed the schools in order of cost efficiency rank, not by academic standings (see second column of the Boston Magazine's table of schools for academic standings). You should fix your mistake -- it does not reflect well on Boston.com's ability to get facts straight.

Of course they only list the Top 10 in this article because they want us to buy a copy of Boston Magazine.

NO THANKS!

If you look at Boston Magazine's complete list (bostonmagazine.com/best_high_school_chart) assuming it includes ALL high schools in the Greater Boston area -- Lexington High School is (inadvertently?) omitted.

Although these sorts of lists make for fun discussions, I wouldn't read too much in to the exact order of the schools. There's a lot of different ways to rank thing. Even if a school is #1 on one list, it shouldn't be surprising that it's 30 on another. General trends are probably correct, though. A highly rank school is a good school; a poorly rank school is a bad one. That's about as far as would read into this.

Yes, Boston Magazine only considered schools near Boston. (Shocking, I know). In addition, some other towns (such as Lexington), are missing from the chart for some reason.

Don't see King Philip Regional on the list. I assume because Plainville is not considered part of Greater Boston (Norfolk and Wrentham are)? Good regional school system. New school. Excellent teachers and administration. Students went to very good colleges this year.

These are from the Best of Boston ratings, not best of MA...

Benjamin MacGowen - When we recently sold our home in Framingham, it was sold to a family relocating to here from Texas. What was their reason? Because Texas schools... stunk. That was it, number one reason. And Framingham isnt even on the top-10 list.

Im an unapologetic conservative. That said, I must admit that the high taxes in Massachusetts have yielded some of the best schools in the nation. Taxes are high, homes values are high, but what you get in this state is worth every penny. I hate taxes, but I still appreciate it. What a bunch of cry babies here, just stompin their feet because one editor stated the obvious - that the most expensive communities in one of the most expensive states have good schools.

Grow up people. Im sure if your kids in Strugglingboro high, MA could go to Dover-Sherborn HS for no extra money, you would all agree in a heartbeat.

why should it be shocking that BOSTON magazine only included schools in the BOSTON area? now I can see everyone being shocked about the globe doing an article on schools in MA and only including boston area schools - but you might as well complain that they left out new hampshire and rhode island schools in their ranking ....

Huh...did anyone else happen to notice that aside from rankings given in the chart Framingham and Foxborough's numbers are exactly the same across the board?

I went to Dover-Sherborn RHS. I would concur with their ranking on the list. The regional school district puts their money where their mouth is, and it pays off for most students. Basically it rocked!

Hey Johnson,

I made no mistake. I wrote about this new way of looking at schools based on efficiency. I quoted the list I intended to quote. I also wrote "the top ten are" and got slammed for not knowing how to count.

To all:

I got a note from Dr. Paul Ash, Superintendent in Lexington, saying that Boston Magazine will be correcting its omission of Lexington from their list. The data on the site should be updated soon. An apology will be in the next issue.

My question remains, should we be looking at more than test scores when we judge a school system?

Algonquin Regional High School which is Northboro-Southboro is a great HS thats not Super Rich. Nice Job Algonquin.

People, take a deep breath. If your school isn't one of "the smartest schools," it doesn't mean your kid is dumb. It doesn't mean you're dumb for sending them there. Your property values are not going down. Your name is not mud. All Boston Magazine was trying to do (not successfully, IMHO) was to measure how much bang these schools are getting for their educational buck.

If you're in a school system that's getting high performance without spending a ton of money, congratulations! If the schools are getting high performance and spending a lot but you can afford it, well and good. If your schools are spending a lot, but these rankings don't show what they're producing, the fault may be with the rankings. They don't adjust for socioeconomic status of the parents, or for the number of ESL or special ed students the school system may be serving quite successfully given their specific needs.

It's just data. It's not the whole story.

I went to Lexington High. Speaking of academic performance the rankings should really breakout the statistics for the honor roll students. All my classmates there were ivy bound, and/or a top 20 college. I'm curious to find out how the best compares to the best in other high schools. That is if I know I will be going through the honors track, then that's really all I care about. Non-Honor students just adds diversity to the school, and is what I liked about LHS.

-Tom

u guys talking about the school in newton etc .what about the school in saugus and everett and revere is that means its a bade school ........

September 16, 2008

Boston Magazine finally put Lexington onto the list.

wilmington is the smartest school ever

Boston area public schools ranking
1.Weston and Boston Latin
3.Lexington
4.Action-boxorough
5.Newton south
6.Lincoln-sudbury
7.Brookline
8.Wellesley
9Newton north
10.Weyland