See the top high schools in the Raleigh and Durham-Chapel Hill metro areas in 2020
Three Triangle schools were ranked both among the best high schools in the nation and in the Raleigh and Durham-Chapel Hill metro areas by U.S. News & World Report.
Raleigh Charter High School, Wake STEM Early College High School and Woods Charter School all ranked in the top 500 in the U.S. News 2020 Best High Schools List released early Tuesday. Raleigh Charter and Wake STEM were ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the Raleigh metropolitan area and Woods Charter School was No. 1 in the Durham-Chapel Hill metro area.
The website’s annual report ranked 17,790 U.S. public high schools based on college readiness, reading and math proficiency, reading and math performance, underserved student performance, college curriculum breadth and graduation rates.
U.S. News has been rating high schools since 2007.
RTI International, a research firm based in Research Triangle Park, crunched the numbers for the 2020 list. The rankings were based on 2017-18 school year data.
More than a fifth of North Carolina’s high schools (20.6%) ranked in the top 25% nationally. That put the state in 29th place.
The Raleigh metro area finished 16th among the nation’s 933 metro areas in terms of having the highest proportion of its public high schools ranked in the top 25% nationally. The Raleigh metro area finished higher than places such as Virginia Beach, New York City, Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago and Dallas.
Durham-Chapel Hill didn’t make the top 40 ranked metro areas in the U.S. News list.
The top 10 schools in the Raleigh metro area (which includes Wake, Johnston and Franklin counties) are:
▪ Raleigh Charter High School (No. 2 in North Carolina and No. 116 nationally)
▪ Wake STEM Early College in Raleigh (No. 7 in the state and No. 226 nationally)
▪ Panther Creek High School in Cary (No. 21 in the state No. 733 nationally)
▪ Green Hope High School in Cary (No. 23 in the state and No. 812 nationally)
▪ Wake Young Women’s Leadership Academy in Raleigh (No. 28 in the state and No. 913 nationally)
▪ Franklin Academy in Wake Forest (No. 33 in the state and No. 1,258 nationally)
▪ Enloe High School in Raleigh (No. 43 in the state and No. 1,617 nationally)
▪ East Wake Academy in Zebulon (No. 44 in the state and No. 1,647 nationally)
▪ Apex High School (No. 46 in the state and No. 1,713 nationally)
▪ Neuse Charter School in Smithfield (No. 49 in the state and No. 1,791 nationally)
The top 10 schools in the Durham-Chapel Hill metro area (which includes Durham, Orange, Chatham and Person counties) are:
▪ Woods Charter School in Chatham County (No. 8 in the state and No. 264 nationally)
▪ East Chapel Hill High School (No. 12 in the state and No. 502 nationally)
▪ Chapel Hill High School (No. 20 in the state and No. 681 nationally)
▪ Research Triangle High School in Durham (No. 22 in the state and No. 745 nationally)
▪ Carrboro High School (No. 26 in the state and No. 874 nationally)
▪ Durham School of the Arts (No. 31 in the state and No. 1,134 nationally)
▪ City of Medicine Academy in Durham (No. 35 in the state and No. 1,281 nationally)
▪ Roxboro Community School (No. 45 in the state and No. 1,663 nationally)
▪ Voyager Academy in Durham (No. 59 in the state and No. 2,222 nationally)
▪ The School For Creative Studies in Durham (No. 91 in the state and No. 3,843 nationally)
Charter schools make up four of the top 10 schools in both the Raleigh and Durham lists.
Charter schools are taxpayer-funded schools that are exempt from some of the rules that traditional public schools must follow. For instance, they’re not required to provide school bus service or participate in the federal school lunch program.
They also have more flexibility in how they spend their money, don’t have to follow the school calendar law and don’t need all their teachers to be licensed.
Read the full report at https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools.
This story was originally published April 21, 2020 at 6:30 AM with the headline "See the top high schools in the Raleigh and Durham-Chapel Hill metro areas in 2020."
