High school is the pathway to higher education, but not all secondary schools in the U.S. are fit for preparing their students for success in college.
A recent study from the Hechinger Report revealed that nearly 40% of students beginning two-year colleges and a quarter of those in four-year colleges failed to complete their remedial classes in Math and English.
Our visualization above shows a list of the top 50 STEM high schools ranked according to data collected from nearly 24,000 public institutions across the 50 states. The schools were evaluated by the U.S. News and World Report’s STEM and National ranking methodologies using the following criteria: math and science participation and success, AP and IB exam scores, state assessment proficiency, underserved student performance, breadth of college curriculum, and graduation rate.
The highest-rated high schools provide experiences for students to become more marketable to colleges. They offer honors, AP, and IB courses that are created in the image of college and university classes, and are often just as rigorous.
Moreover, the fields of study most often associated with the highest earnings after college are those that require an advanced understanding of math—such as engineering, manufacturing, and information technology. STEM high schools—institutions that center student advancement in science, technology, engineering, and math—provide their pupils with the greatest margin of post-secondary success.
