The top 100 high schools are located across 26 states and the District of Columbia, according to the 2024 U.S. News Best High Schools national rankings, with 62% concentrated in Arizona, California, Florida, New Jersey, New York and Texas.
Arizona and Florida each have 12 schools in the top 100, tied for the most of any state. Arizona has 360 ranked high schools overall, which falls in the top 20 states in terms of total number of schools ranked. Meanwhile, Florida has 647 ranked schools, which puts it in the top 10 for total number of schools ranked.
The majority of Arizona's schools in the top 100 are in Phoenix and Tucson or surrounding suburbs, with one in Prescott and another in Flagstaff. Of those 12 high-ranked Arizona high schools, ten are part of the BASIS Charter Schools network, including the No. 1-ranked school, BASIS Peoria. More than half of the Florida schools in the top 100 are near Miami, with the remaining five in Jacksonville, Melbourne, Merritt Island, Osprey and Kissimmee.
California follows with 11 of the top 100 schools, the majority of them in the greater Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas. Texas has 10 schools ranked in the top 100. Five are in the Dallas-Forth Worth metropolitan area, with four of those are in the Dallas Independent School District. The rest are in Austin, Brownsville, Grand Prairie, Houston and San Antonio.
The number of ranked high schools in each state differs significantly, ranging from 33 in the District of Columbia to more than 1,650 in California.
Below are the states with the highest proportion of high schools that ranked in the top 100:
- Washington D.C.: 6.1%
- Arizona: 3.3%
- New Jersey: 1.97%
- Florida: 1.85%
- Arkansas: 1.4%
U.S. News assesses public high schools based on college readiness, state assessment proficiency, state assessment performance, underserved student performance, college curriculum breadth and graduation rates.
In almost all cases, state assessment results for this year's rankings were based on 2021-2022 data. For a few states, data from earlier years was used. U.S. News also used 2021-2022 for AP and IB assessments. See the full methodology here.
In addition to national rankings, U.S. News ranks schools by type, including charter schools and magnet schools. Tesla STEM High School in Washington earned the No. 1 spot among magnet schools, while Julia R. Masterman Secondary School in Pennsylvania was ranked No. 2. BASIS Peoria – the No. 1 school nationally – was also the No. 1 charter school, followed by Signature School in Indiana.
School districts with the highest number of schools in the top 100 include BASIS Charter Schools Inc., a network of charters in Arizona, with 10, followed by New York City Public Schools with nine and Chicago Public Schools with five. Dallas Independent School District, Haas Hall Academy in Arkansas and Miami-Dade County Public Schools each have four schools in the top 100.
Enrollment sizes vary at each high school in the top 100, ranging from about 75 students in grades 9-12 at BASIS Prescott in Arizona during the 2022-2023 school year to 5,940 at Brooklyn Technical High School in New York.
The map below shows the locations of the top 100 Best High Schools nationwide and can be filtered by school type – charter, magnet or traditional. This data was retrieved from the Common Core of Data at the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, so school type labels may differ from what's posted on each school's website. Click on the dots to learn more about each school.
See the complete rankings of the Best High Schools.
