7 N.W. Arkansas High Schools in Top Twenty for All Arkansas

It’s always a pleasure to relate the accolades heaped upon various aspects of life in NW Arkansas. This time I’m writing about high-ranking public high schools.

U. S. News & World Report joined forces with American Institutes for Research to evaluate 31,242 U. S. public high schools.

HaasHall Academy, a charter school located in Fayetteville, earned first place in all of Arkansas according to the list published April 21, 2014. In addition, U. S. News placed the academy at a very impressive #137 in the entire country.

Six other NW Arkansas high schools placed in the Arkansas top twenty: Bentonville H.S. #3; both Rogers high schools (Rogers and Heritage) at #4 and #5 respectively; Pea Ridge H.S. #6; Lincoln H.S. #14; and Siloam Springs H.S. #16. Eureka Springs also made the list at #10. I was a little puzzled, however, as to why Fayetteville was not ranked, since its numbers were similar to Bentonville and Rogers (schools of similar size). 

In any case, congratulations to students, teachers and administrators alike. We do have excellent educational opportunities for students in NW Arkansas, another factor to make it a great place to live. Way to go! 

For more information as to how the rankings were determined, click here.

Four NW Arkansas Schools Make List of Top High Schools in Country

There are approximately 20,000 to 25,000 public high schools in America. I have to use the word ‘approximately’ because no matter which source I referenced I found no current, accurate statistics. Oh well, most folks don’t like statistics anyway. The point is, there are a lot of high schools.

Newsweek and The Daily Beast have recently published their annual list of best high schools in the country; that is to say, the best schools in preparing students to enter college. Their goal was to find the top 2,000 schools. To accomplish that, they analyzed data submitted by 2,500 schools. (All public high schools were eligible to submit data.)

The good news is that Arkansas has twelve high schools ranked in the top 2,000. Northwest Arkansas has four schools in the elite group:

#      83 Haas Hall Academy, Fayetteville
#    799 Fayetteville High School
#    915 Bentonville High School
# 1,757 Pea Ridge High School

I feel it is important to note that all four schools are open enrollment, not selective as is the case with some other schools listed in the top 2,000. The highest ranking Arkansas school was the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts in Hot Springs, at number 13.

Here is the complete list of top ranking high schools in the US.