Two of four Ann Arbor high schools recently were ranked among the top 20 high schools in the state.
Pioneer and Huron high schools in the Ann Arbor Public Schools are no strangers to the best high school lists. In the 2013 U.S. News rankings, Pioneer and Huron were named 12th and 16th in the Michigan, respectively.
Nationally, Pioneer is ranked No. 681 and Huron is 763rd.
Both Ann Arbor high schools made gains in the rankings. Huron and Pioneer were ranked 20th and 19th in the 2012 U.S. News evaluation. But Saline High School, the other Washtenaw County school frequently found among the nation's top schools lists, was not given a nod this year by the U.S. News and World Report.
In 2012, Saline was ranked ninth in Michigan and No. 525 nationally.
Ann Arbor's remaining two high schools, Skyline and Community, fell into the unranked masses of the U.S. News and World Report listing.
Community did receive a bronze medal for being a high-performing school, despite being left off the state and national rankings. The choice high school consistently has the highest graduation rate of all Ann Arbor's high schools and the best Michigan Education Association Program and Michigan Merit Exam test scores.
The U.S. News and World Report gave gold, silver and bronze medal designations based on certain criteria. Gold was given to the top 500 schools in the U.S. with the highest college readiness scores; silver was given to high-performing schools with lower college readiness; and bronze was awarded to high-performing schools based on their state exam performances.
On the fall 2012 MEAP test, Community had a social studies proficiency of 67 percent; Huron and Pioneer had proficiencies of 47.7 and 57.5, respectively.
Huron and Pioneer both earned silver medals from the U.S. News and World Report. Their college readiness scores are 38.0 and 40.0, respectively.
College readiness is computed based on a school's Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate program participation rate (the number of seniors in the 2010-11 academic year who took at least one AP or IB test before graduating, divided by the number of seniors) and how well the students did on those tests, according to the U.S. News website.
Community received a college readiness score of 10.5, which is near the state average. According to the U.S. News report, Community had 12 percent of its senior population take AP tests in 2010-11 and 10 percent passed.
Huron had 42 percent of its seniors that year take AP tests and 37 percent passed. Pioneer had 44 percent of its 12th-grade population take one or more tests and 39 percent passed.
The U.S. News and World Report rankings are based on student-to-teacher ratios, college readiness and students' average proficiencies in math and reading. More than 21,000 public high schools in 49 states were evaluated for the 2013 U.S. News listing. Nebraska was the only state not included, according to the website, because of a lack of reported data.
Danielle Arndt covers K-12 education for AnnArbor.com. Follow her on Twitter @DanielleArndt or email her at daniellearndt@annarbor.com.