By Katrina Margolis
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Each year, U.S. News ranks the best high schools in the country. Among the high schools ranked in Massachusetts, 22 were awarded gold medals, 54 earned silver medals, and 24 received bronze medals. Medfield Senior High School found itself ranked the number five high school in the state, with a gold medal. Schools are ranked based on their performance on state-required tests and how well they prepare students for college. On a college readiness index, out of 100, Medfield came in at 69.1.
Laura Mulready and Colleen Hawley, co-presidents of the Medfield Coalition for Public Education (MCPE) said, “We are thrilled and proud to live in a school district that is continually improving. We have witnessed firsthand the energy, creativity and commitment of Medfield educators and it is due to them that this ranking is possible.”
This is the second year in a row that Medfield Senior High has ranked in the top 10. Superintendent James Marsden is incredibly proud of the work that has gone into this reward. “I’m certainly pleased at the performance of our students and happy for them and our teachers. Whenever a school gets recognized, it’s great for the distract and great for the community,” he said. “When kids do that well in high school they have certainly had strong education in elementary and middle school, and strong family support as well.”
While Medfield ranks highly in terms of academics, with a 99% English proficiency and a 95% mathematics proficiency, it is not just the strong academics that Marsden is proud of.
“The important thing is that we have a really well rounded education for our kids, it’s not just academic focus all the time. We have outstanding athletics, an outstanding art department and drama department - we’re really proud of that as well, it’s not just the academic accolade,” he said. “I’m proud that we produce really well-rounded students.”
To create the 2017 Best High Schools rankings, US News & World Report teamed up with North Carolina-based RTI International, a global nonprofit social science research firm. The key principles are that a great high school must serve all of its students well, not just those who are college-bound, and it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes to show it is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators.
In total, 28,496 public high schools were reviewed. Looking at each school, US News & World Report first determined whether each school’s students were performing better than statistically expected for students in this state. If a school passed this step, US News assessed whether their disadvantaged students performed at or better than the state average for the least-advantaged students. Next, if a school met this requirement, it had to meet a graduation rate benchmark. Once a school met all of these criteria, it was able to be assessed on the final step, which is college-readiness performance based on Advanced Placement test data.
