The Best High Schools

Newsweek's Best High School Rankings

After being directed to the website from Bob's blog, I started searching around for schools I recognized. The top 1000 public high schools in the nation. That's a lot of high schools. I combed through the first 500 and after seeing Hickville, Nebraska a few times and Yockle, Kansas as cities housing some of the top high schools, I started to gain false hope that a high school from the WCCUSD would get in. I saw Albany High in the list. Surely, El Cerrito isn't that far away from Albany. But I was wrong. My dreams of seeing my high school there... dashed.

For those of you who don't want to bother with clicking the hyperlink above, here's how Newsweek ranked the schools:

By dividing the number of AP and IB tests taken at a school by the number of graduating seniors, we can measure how committed the school is to helping kids take college-level courses.

With that as the measure of excellence, it's no wonder the WCCUSD didn't crack the top 1000. I took 3 AP tests over the course of my high school career at El Cerrito: Calculus AB, English (the non-lit version), and US History. It wasn't until I went to Cal that my eyes were opened to the world of college freshmen coming in with 100 million AP units. And there I was, naively thinking that the only AP tests out there were Calculus, English, Biology, US History, European History, Spanish, and French. Blast you Hickville, Nebraska and your AP Tractor Pull!

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1. Walnut Computer Desk $50 (Mountain View)
2. Pottery Barn Chairs Set of 5 $50 (Los Gatos)
3. Spanish Style Table with Set of 6 Chairs $80 (Los Gatos)
4. Crate & Barrel Dinnerware Set Service for 6 $30 (Campbell)
5. Baker's Rack $35 (San Jose)
6. Eureka Bagless Vacuum $25 (Menlo Park)
7. Iron Magazine Rack $30 (Menlo Park)