The Kennett Consolidated School District is proud to announce that U.S. News & World Report and the Washington Post have named Kennett High School one of America’s Best High Schools and one of America’s Most Challenging High Schools, respectively.
To produce the 2016 Best High Schools rankings, U.S. News & World Report teamed up with North Carolina–based RTI International, a global nonprofit social-science research firm. The comprehensive rankings methodology is based on the key principles that a great high school must serve all of its students well, not just those who are college bound, and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes to show it is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators.
In order to name its Most Challenging High Schools, the Washington Post uses a “Challenge Index.” This index is based on the total number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Cambridge tests given at the school each year, divided by the number of seniors who graduated in May or June. Schools that had as many tests in 2015 as they had graduates and received a ratio of at least 1.00 earned a spot on the national list. Kennett High School was ranked 17th out of 39 schools that made the national list.
“These awards are meaningful because they are a reflection of the growth in academic achievement realized by our students. I congratulate our parents for their influence on our students’ efforts to work to their potential, our teachers and principals who teach and give of their time to our students each and every day with the expectation that they all succeed, and the students themselves for their desire to do their best,” says Kennett Consolidated School District superintendent Dr. Barry Tomasetti. “These types of high school recognitions are a credit to all of our teachers, from kindergarten through twelfth grade, as each teacher has a hand in molding our students for a successful future.”
Kennett High School principal Mr. Jeremy Hritz says, “These recent recognitions from U.S. News and World Report and the Washington Post are the result of the hard work of our committed and dedicated students and staff. Teachers expect academic excellence and our students deliver. We are all tremendously proud of this accomplishment.”
For more information on the U.S. News & World Report’s and the Washington Post’s ranking processes and details on Kennett High School’s rankings, please visit http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/pennsylvania?int=9abb08 and http://apps.washingtonpost.com/local/highschoolchallenge/schools/2016/list/pennsylvania-schools/.
