West Valley high school ranked as best in nation by US News

PHOENIX — A new ranking of the best high schools of 2024 placed BASIS Peoria at the top of the list.

In total, 12 Arizona schools ranked in the Top 100 of U.S. News and World Report’s Best High School Rankings.

Of the dozen, 10 are part of the BASIS Charter Schools network.

Most of Arizona’s 12 schools in the top 100 list are in Phoenix and Tucson, although one is in Prescott and another is in Flagstaff.

How do researchers determine which schools are the best?

The ranking is based on college readiness, how well students in underserved communities perform, graduation rates and college curriculum breadth. That last factor reflects 12th-grade students who took and earned good scores on AP or IB exams in multiple areas of focus.

Two other factors impact a school’s ranking:

• Whether performance on state assessments exceeds expectations given the school’s proportion of underserved students.
• State assessment proficiency, which is based on aggregated scores on state assessments that students may need to pass to graduate.

U.S. News collects this data from third-party sources. It gets numbers from AP and IB directly from the College Board and International Baccalaureate “when available.”

Ranking of BASIS Peoria high school represents Arizona excellence

The charter school’s top spot marked a significant jump from its ranking last year. BASIS Peoria high school ranked was No. 12 a year ago.

It outranked nearly 17,660 out of over 24,000 public high schools in all 50 states, along with the District of Colombia, according to U.S. News.

Arizona has 360 ranked high schools on the list of the nation’s best. That means it falls into the top 20 states with the most ranked schools.

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