Weston leads top 50 public high schools ranked by Boston Magazine

Globe Staff

Weston High School was rated the best public high school in the state, Boston Magazine announced in a press release Tuesday.

The top 10 districts in the public high school rankings, which will be reported in Boston magazine's September issue, are: Weston, Dover-Sherborn, Lexington, Wellesley, Concord-Carlisle, Bedford, Brookline, Wayland, Newton North and Newton South. Newton North opened a $197-million high school today.

South of Boston, other public schools in the top 50 include Westwood, Sharon, Canton, Cohasset, Dedham, Duxbury, Hanover, Hingham, Hull, and Walpole.

North of Boston, other public schools include Hamilton-Wenham, Cambridge Rindge and Latin, Marblehead, Winchester, Andover, Arlington, Newburyport and Manchester Essex.

Natick High School was number 50 on the Boston Magazine list.

The magazine's rankings of the best public schools and biggest values in the area are based on such factors as MCAS scores, SAT scores, per pupil spending, studen-teacher ratio, graduation rate, percentage of students who continue into college, and the amount of sports teams and clubs.

George Recck, director of the Math Resource Center at Babson College, calculated mean scores for each data category and then ranked schools based on their distance from the average.

The top 50 list generally reflected the wealth of the communities.

Weston had the highest average taxes on a single-family home, at more than $15,000, a recent analysis by the Globe showed. The community still had the state's second-highest average assessments, at $1.4 million for a single family home.

Weston spends $18,023 per student, according to Boston Magazine, and sends 93.4 percent of its graduates to college. Its student to teacher ratio is about 10 to 1.

Weston also topped last year's Boston Magazine list, which tracked the top 150 schools.