Bangor falls while Hampden soars in national high school rankings

A national media company’s annual ranking of nearly 18,000 high schools across the United States, including 103 in Maine, showed some Penobscot County schools soared while others fell.

Bangor High School fell from being ranked 13th in the state last year to 23rd this year, but Hampden Academy shot up to 14th this year compared with 41st last year in the U.S. News and World Report’s 2024 rankings of the best high schools in the country, released Tuesday.

Katahdin Middle/High School in Stacyville knocked Cape Elizabeth High School out of the third-place spot on the statewide list. Last year, Katahdin, which teaches about 140 students grades 6 through 12, was ranked 11th in the state.

Other notable shifts include Central High School in Corinth ascending to 35th from 57th and Hermon High School bumped up to 36th from 44th.

The rankings are based on student performance, graduation rates and what courses schools offer students, among other data.

The annual school ranking is intended to “offer a starting point for parents to understand a school’s academic performance, whether it’s a prospective school or one that their child is already attending,” LaMont Jones, Ed.D., U.S. News’ managing editor of education, said in a statement.

Several of the schools within Maine’s top 10 are clustered around the southern part of the state, including Greely High School in Cumberland and Kennebunk High School, which held their first and second place positions, respectively, from last year.

Only 1.9 percent of Maine high schools scored within the top 25 percent of schools nationwide, leading the state to be placed last in a list comparing all 50 states.

Schools are ranked annually using six indicators including students’ test scores on state assessments for reading, math and science, college curriculum breadth, graduation rate and students’ college readiness, meaning student participation in and performance on Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate exams.

Maine was one of only two states, the other being Oklahoma, that didn’t give U.S. News permission to use schools’ Advanced Placement data in the rankings, but the media company did not explain why. This means Advanced Placement test data was not used in the rankings for the Maine schools.

How Black, Hispanic and low-income students — referred to as “underserved student performance” — scored on state assessments compared with other students is also taken into consideration, according to U.S. News.

Of the six indicators, college readiness is given the most weight, as it makes up 30 percent of a school’s score. State standardized test performance and proficiency each count as 20 percent, while curriculum breadth, graduation rate and underserved student populations count as 10 percent each.

Using those metrics, U.S. News gave each school a score on a zero to 100 scale to reflect its performance. The scores also indicated how well a school did compared with others nationally. For example, if a school was given a score of 60, it landed in the 60th percentile of all schools included in the ranking.

In 2015, U.S. News annual high school ranking used inaccurate data from some Maine schools, including enrollment numbers and that skewed the results. Some schools incorrectly jumped up the list while others were missing from the ranking altogether, seemingly without reason.