U.S. News Ranks Murrieta High Schools Among Best

News release from the Murrieta Valley Unified School District:

Murrieta: U.S. News released the fourth edition of the Best High Schools rankings, available exclusively online. The 2013 rankings include data on nearly 22,000 public high schools from 49 states and the District of Columbia.

Murrieta Valley High School and Vista Murrieta High School were both named Silver Medal winners. Murrieta Valley ranked 281st in California and 1,284 in the nation for students' college readiness score of 28.6 and their overall academic performance index of 833. Vista Murrieta High School is ranked 326th within California and 1,415 in the nation and students' college readiness score of 25.6.and their overall academic performance index of 823.

U.S. News' comprehensive rankings methodology is based on the key principles that a great high school must serve all of its students well, not just those who are college-bound, and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes to show the school is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators.

A three-step process determined the Best High Schools. The first two steps ensured that the schools serve all students well, using performance on state proficiency tests as the benchmarks. For those schools that made it past the first two steps, a third step assessed the degree to which schools prepare students for college-level work. The top-performing high schools (gold and silver distinctions) are schools that met all three criteria. Only schools that had values above 16.3 in their college readiness index scored high enough to meet the criteria for gold and silver medal selection.

District Superintendent Pat Kelley said, "We are proud of the world class education provided by our all of high schools. It is exciting to see our young people being prepared for college and careers with highly rigorous advanced placement and dual enrollment courses, the International Baccalaureate program, award-winning extra-curricular activities programs and competitive athletics!"

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Editor's Note: Data from the 2010-2011 school year was used to compile the rankings, according to U.S. News, which may be why Murrieta Mesa High School was unranked in the report. Murrieta Mesa opened in 2009 and graduated its first seniors in 2012.