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8-29-2023 5:55pm
Westwood High School Ranking Drops, But Still Appears in Top 20 of U.S. News' Ranking of MA Public High Schools
Darlene Cancell
Editor
Photos from top left, clockwise: Needham High School by John Phelan, CC BY 3.0 ; Westwood High School by 16jmb, CC BY-SA 4.0; Medfield High School from Medfield Public Schools website; Dover-Sherborn Regional High School from Dover-Sherborn High School website.
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High schools in Westwood and three towns in the immediate area are among the top 20 ranked public high schools in Massachusetts according to the newly released, annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report (U.S. News), making the Westwood area a great place for a high school education.
At No. 5, Dover-Sherborn Regional High School is ranked the highest of the local schools, as it was last year. Medfield High School is ranked No. 16, Needham High School is No. 19 and Westwood High School is ranked No. 20.
Compared to last year's top 20 in Massachusetts rankings, Medfield High School saw the biggest jump, moving up four spots, while Dover-Sherborn Regional High School moved up two spots. Needham High School was absent from the top 20 ranked public high schools in 2022, but it now appears as No. 19 on the 2023 list.
Westwood High School fell eight places from the No. 12 spot last year to No. 20 this year. There could be a number of reasons for that drop. One possibility could be due to the fact that this year, U.S. News adjusted three of the six measures it typically uses to determine rankings, due to the impact that COVID-19 had on data collection for 2020-2021. Depending on what type of data was available in Massachusetts for those years, the methodology that U.S. News used to derive its ranking could have come from any of three different data sets: data from only 2018-2019; data from 2018-2019 and 2020-2021; or only 2020-2021 data.
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The 2023 rankings of best Massachusetts public high schools from U.S. News are as follows:
1. Boston Latin School (Boston)
2. Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School (Hadley)
3. The Bromfield School (Harvard)
4. Sturgis Charter Pubic School (Hyannis)
5. Dover-Sherborn Regional High School (Dover)
6. Lexington High School (Lexington)
7. Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School (Marlborough)
8. Belmont High School (Belmont)
9. Acton-Boxborough Regional High School (Acton)
10. Weston High School (Weston)
11. Mystic Valley Regional Charter School (Malden)
12. Boston Latin Academy (Dorchester)
13. Hopkinton High School (Hopkinton)
14. Pioneer Charter School of Science (Everett)
15. Wellesley High School (Wellesley)
16. Medfield Senior High School (Medfield)
17. John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science (Roxbury)
18. Pioneer Charter School of Science 2 (Saugus)
19. Needham High School (Needham)
20. Westwood High School (Westwood)
Source of rankings: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/massachusetts/rankings [visited Aug. 29, 2023].
The six factors that the rankings looked at are: (1) college readiness; (2) college curriculum breadth (i.e., 12th grade participation and performance on AP or IB exams); (3) student proficiency in state testing of math, reading, and science;(4) student proficiency in state assessments while considering demographics; (5) learning outcomes of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students; and (6) graduation rate.
