Four Greenville County Public High Schools Recognized by US News and World Report
Three Greenville County high schools – Greenville Senior High Academy, Riverside High, and Wade Hampton High – received Silver Awards and one high school – Berea High – received a Bronze Award on the 2013 U.S. News and World Report Best High Schools Ranking Report. More than 21,000 traditional and charter high schools were analyzed across the nation.
School ratings are based on the key principles that a great high school must serve all students well, and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes to show the school is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators.
A three-step process determined the Best High Schools. The first two steps used performance on state proficiency tests as benchmarks to ensure schools serve all students well. For those schools that achieved the first two steps, a third step assessed the degree to which schools prepare students for college-level work.
U.S. News nationally awarded the 4,805 highest-scoring schools with a gold, silver or bronze designation. A high school's position in the numerical rankings, whether it was awarded a medal or just ranked was dependent on how high it scored on all three steps of the ranking.
- Gold medals: Schools with the highest unrounded college readiness index values were numerically ranked from 1 to 500 and are the gold medal winners.
- Silver medals: The next schools with the highest unrounded college readiness indexes were numerically ranked from 501 through 2,290 and are the 1,790 silver medal winners.
- Bronze medals: 2,515 high schools that passed the first two steps in the methodology were awarded bronze medals. A bronze medal school either does not offer AP or IB courses, or its college readiness index was less than the median score needed to be ranked silver.