Washington Post Ranks SHS No. 170 in Country
May 23, 2011
Stevenson High School is considered one of the top high schools in the country based on the
2011 High School Challenge list published by the
Washington Post on Sunday, May 22.
SHS is ranked No. 170 in the country
based on the following formula: the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Cambridge Advanced International Certificate of Education exams offered at a school, divided by the number of graduating seniors. Almost every school with a ratio of at least 1.000 makes the national list. Stevenson’s ratio for 2010 was 3.693.
If the idea sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The High School Challenge is a new name given to an old idea, the Challenge Index, which was started in 1998 by Post columnist Jay Mathews and published in Newsweek magazine. The list moved to the newspaper after the Washington Post Company sold Newsweek last summer.
The only high schools in Illinois rated ahead of Stevenson are Walter Payton College Prep (77), Jones College Prep (101) and Lincoln Park High School (164), all in Chicago.
Stevenson annually appears in Mathews’ rankings; the school has been listed in the top 200 for the past five years. Even though its ranking is the lowest of the last five years, Stevenson’s latest ratio is its highest.