ALABAMA – Once again, Montgomery’s Loveless Academic Magnet Program landed the top spot among Alabama’s high schools in the U.S. News & World Report’s 2021 rankings.
Huntsville’s New Century Tech High School and Mountain Brook High School remained in second and third, as well.
Many of the schools also were highly-ranked last year. Most also are in cities and suburbs and have higher numbers of white students than the state average population.
“Families can use the Best High Schools rankings to see how schools compare at the national, state and local level on factors like graduation rates and college readiness,” said Anita Narayan, managing editor of education at U.S. News. “The rankings also provide insight into academic performance among underserved groups showing how well schools are supporting these students.”
Alabama’s top high school, known as LAMP, is a magnet school with selective admission requirements and is one of five magnet schools in the state to land in the top 25. LAMP ranked 14th among all high schools nationwide and took the number seven spot in the national ranking of magnet schools.
Twenty-one of the top-ranked schools made the list last year, but there are four new additions. Scroll down to see the full list.
U.S. News’ rankings focus on six factors:
- College readiness (30%), which includes the proportion of seniors who took and earned a qualifying score on Advanced Placement and/or International Baccalaureate exams at some point during their high school career,
- Reading and math proficiency (20%), from testing in the 2018-19 school year
- Reading and math performance (20%), calculated as expected performance given a school’s student body characteristics,
- Underserved student performance (10%), evaluating how well an underserved subgroup scored on state assessments compared with the average for non-underserved students among schools in the same state,
- College curriculum breadth (10%), calculated as the percentage of seniors in 2018-19 who took and passed multiple AP/IB exams, and
- Graduation rates (10%) based on the 2018-19 school year.
Alabama’s Education Report Card, created by the Alabama State Department of Education, calculates grades based on many of the same indicators, but makes no considerations for the expected performance of students based on race and socioeconomic characteristics.
Each of the top 10 schools earned A’s on the state’s report card for the 2018-19 time period. State school report card grades were not given for the 2019-20 school year.
In addition to overall ranking, U.S. News ranked top STEM, charter, and magnet schools.
Mountain Brook High School is the only Alabama school on the national STEM list, coming in at number 141. Alabama has only one public charter high school, and it was not ranked on the national charter school list.
Nine Alabama schools identified as magnet schools were ranked nationally, with LAMP taking the number 12 spot nationwide. Huntsville’s New Century Technology High School is ranked 48th nationwide.
In addition to national rankings, U.S. News ranked high schools within each state, and schools ranked in the top 25 are shown below.
Three of Montgomery County’s schools—all magnet schools—are in the top 25, the most of any Alabama school district.
Hoover City, Huntsville City, Madison City, and Shelby County each have two high schools in the top 25.
Alabama’s top 25 schools have many things in common:
- All but four of the schools were in the top 25 last year,
- The percentages of students in poverty–measured two different ways (explained in the data sources at the end of the article)–varied from 0% to 63% in the top 25 schools.
- White students make up the majority of students in 20 of the top 25 schools,
- Twenty-two of the top 25 earned an A on the most recent state report card, and three earned B’s,
- The smallest high school on the list has 319 students, and the largest has nearly 2,900,
- Nine of the 25 schools spent less than the state average of per-student funding ($10,102 for the 2019 fiscal year)
- Eighteen of the 25 are located in cities or suburbs,
- Ten are located in and around the Birmingham area, 10 are in north Alabama, and
- Five of the top 25 are magnet schools with selective admission requirements.
Here are Alabama’s top 25 high schools, counting down to number one. All figures are for the 2018-19 school year. An asterisk (*) indicates the school is new to U.S. News’ top 25 ranking for 2021.
