These are the top high schools in the Raleigh and Durham-Chapel Hill metro areas in 2021
Four 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, Wake STEM Early College, Woods Charter School and East Chapel Hill High all ranked in the top 500 in the U.S. News 2021 Best High Schools List released early Tuesday.
Raleigh Charter and Wake STEM were ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the Raleigh metropolitan area. Woods Charter and East Chapel Hill were ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the Durham-Chapel Hill metro area.
The website’s annual report ranked more than 17,800 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 2021 list. The rankings were based on 2018-19 school year data, so they’re not affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
More than a fifth of North Carolina’s high schools (21.3%) ranked in the top 25% nationally. That put the state in 27th place.
The Raleigh metro area finished 12th 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.
Top Raleigh metro area schools
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. 100 nationally)
▪ Wake STEM Early College in Raleigh (No. 6 in the state and No. 231 nationally)
▪ Panther Creek High School in Cary (No. 14 in the state No. 562 nationally)
▪ Green Hope High School in Cary (No. 22 in the state and No. 816 nationally)
▪ Franklin Academy in Wake Forest (No. 32 in the state and No. 1,094 nationally)
▪ Wake Young Women’s Leadership Academy in Raleigh (No. 36 in the state and No. 1,282 nationally)
▪ Triangle Math and Science Academy in Cary (No. 41 in the state and No. 1,429 nationally)
▪ Apex High School (No. 42 in the state and No. 1,569 nationally)
▪ Enloe High School in Raleigh (No. 44 in the state and No. 1,628 nationally)
▪ Apex Friendship High School in Apex (No. 46 in the state and No. 1,758 nationally)
Top Durham-Chapel Hill schools
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. 4 in the state and No. 170 nationally)
▪ East Chapel Hill High School (No. 10 in the state and No. 352 nationally)
▪ Chapel Hill High School (No. 19 in the state and No. 691 nationally)
▪ City of Medicine Academy in Durham (No. 27 in the state and No. 958 nationally)
▪ Research Triangle High School in Durham (No. 29 in the state and No. 1,002 nationally)
▪ Durham School of the Arts (No. 30 in the state and No. 1,067 nationally)
▪ Carrboro High School (No. 33 in the state and No. 1,110 nationally)
▪ Voyager Academy in Durham (No. 60 in the state and No. 2,268 nationally)
▪ Roxboro Community School (No. 68 in the state and No. 2,591 nationally)
▪ Eno River Academy in Durham (No. 70 in the state and No. 2,699 nationally)
Charter schools make up three of the top 10 schools in the Raleigh list and five of the top 10 in the Durham list.
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 www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools.
This story was originally published April 27, 2021 at 6:00 AM with the headline "These are the top high schools in the Raleigh and Durham-Chapel Hill metro areas in 2021."
