Basis Scottsdale slips from first to third in national high school rankings
May 1, 2019, 4:15 AM
(Facebook Photo/Basis Scottsdale)
(Facebook Photo/Basis Scottsdale)
PHOENIX – A year after being at the head of the class, a Valley charter school was named the nation’s third-best high school in a prestigious annual list.
Basis Scottsdale was the only Arizona campus to crack the top 10 of U.S. News and World Report’s 2019 high school rankings, which were released Tuesday.
Arizona experienced a big drop-off from 2018, when state schools, especially those in the Basis network, dominated the national rankings.
The Scottsdale campus, at No. 1, was one of six state Basis high schools in the top 10 last year, including a sweep of the top five spots.
Basis still led the Arizona pack in the website’s new rankings, with the state’s seven highest-ranked high schools.
The network’s Chandler campus came in at No. 18, followed by No. 21 Peoria, No. 27 Flagstaff, No. 32 Oro Valley, No. 34 Tucson North and No. 35 Phoenix.
Tucson University was the top Arizona district school at No. 40.
In addition to being named the No. 3 overall high school in the country this year, Basis Scottsdale retained its standing as the No. 1 charter high school and No. 2 STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) school.
Basis has 22 campuses in Arizona, half of which cover the high school level. It also has three schools in Texas and one each in Louisiana and Washington, D.C.
U.S. News worked with nonprofit research firm RTI International to rank 17,245 public high schools based on six indicators of school quality: college readiness, college curriculum breadth, math and reading proficiency, math and reading performance given the school’s proportion of underserved students, underserved student performance and graduation rates.
Academic Magnet High School of North Charleston, South Carolina, took over the No. 1 spot from Scottsdale Basis.
