Needham High named a top public high school

WHAT IT IS: Boston Magazine named Needham High School one of the best public high schools in Massachusetts in the September 2012 issue, ranking it number 14 out of 50.

MORE: Boston Magazine crunched the numbers for 230 public high schools to come up with a ranking of the 50 best public high schools in the Greater Boston area. Rankings were based on data gathered from consulting school officials and websites, as well as the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The rankings took into account test scores, number of AP classes, graduation rate, percent of students who go on to college, as well as the number of sports teams and clubs. The rankings took into account but de-emphasized per pupil spending and student to teacher ratio, because, according to a press release from the magazine, “recent studies show that they’re not educational silver bullets.”

George Recck, director of the Math Resource Center at Babson College, calculated the mean scores for each category and then ranked the districts based on a weighted average of each school data point’s difference from the mean.

ADDITIONAL INFO: For data on all 230 high schools in Greater Boston, visit www.bostonmagazine.com/schools.

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