Play It Again Sports St Louis Kirkwood

For the second straight year, Nixa topped the list of best high schools in the Springfield metro area.

In the U.S. News & World Report's 2022 Best High Schools rankings released Tuesday, Nixa was the only high school from southwest Missouri to crack the state's Top 50.

Nixa High School was ranked No. 30 in Missouri, up from No. 36 a year ago.

David Kelly, principal of the 1,954-student high school, said the ranking is confirmation that Nixa is on the right path.

"It does help confirm what I would say a lot of our teachers and a lot of our patrons in our community know about our schools," he said. "To be recognized for the hard work that everybody is putting in is nice."

More:Nixa High School wins Gold Star ranking, says in-person learning fueled student success

Kelly said the credit for the high school's success is a tribute to students, teachers and supportive parents and community members.

"We have dedicated students who come to school and they're ready to learn," he said, adding that the community has high expectations.

"When you work that in with educators who are dedicated to their profession and who are passionate about the work that they do every day, it's a good recipe for success."

More:Nixa Teacher of the Year Ellen Fogle: Our job is to help kids feel 'loved and safe'

The report's annual rankings elevate high schools based on graduation rates, qualifying scores on an array of college-level exams, and math, reading and science scores on state-mandated exams.

In a news release, Eric Brooks, principal data analyst at U.S. News, said the rankings take a "comprehensive approach to evaluating" the high schools.

"Looking at factors like graduation rates and underserved student performance, families can use this information to learn more about their local schools," he said.

Other factors also influence the rankings including enrollment, student diversity and the percentage of students qualifying for free and reduced-price lunch, a national measure of poverty.

The 2022 rankings were based on publicly reported data from the 2019-20 school year. However, with many states waiving testing requirements at the onset of the pandemic in spring 2020, the report relied in part on historic testing data.

This year, more than 17,800 high schools were evaluated. The states with the most top-performing high schools included Massachusetts, Connecticut, Florida, California and Maryland. Missouri was ranked No. 42.

Along with the national rankings, the report also singled out top high schools at the state and metro levels.

"Southwest Missouri is a great area for public education and I don't want that to get lost in this, either," said Kelly, of Nixa. "In our area, all of the schools — Springfield, Ozark, Republic, Nixa, Willard, Branson — we all push each other and we all learn from one another."

More:Future of the Ozarks: Springfield seventh-grader's chef skills take her to 35 cooking competitions, TV show

How are Springfield schools ranked against each other?

Here are the rankings for the 29 high schools within the Springfield metro area:

• No. 1 — Nixa High
• No. 2 — Spokane High
• No. 3 — Ozark High
• No. 4 — Fordland High
• No. 5 — Central High, Springfield
• No. 6 — Republic High
• No. 7 — Fair Play High
• No. 8 — Walnut Grove High
• No. 9 — Fair Grove High
• No. 10 — Strafford High
• No. 11 — Kickapoo High, Springfield
• No. 12 — Clever High
• No. 13 — Willard High
• No. 14 — Bolivar High
• No. 15 — Humansville High
• No. 16 — Niangua High
• No. 17 — Marshfield High
• No. 18 — Seymour High
• No. 19 — Marion C. Early High, Morrisville
• No. 20 — Glendale High, Springfield

Other high schools in the metro area were not specifically assigned a rank and include: Springfield's Hillcrest and Parkview plus high schools in Ash Grove, Billings, Buffalo, Halfway. Logan-Rogersville, Pleasant Hope, and Sparta.

There were separate rankings for high schools in the Branson and Joplin metro areas.

For the Missouri rankings, the report evaluated a total of 465 high schools.

Top high schools in Missouri

The Top 10 for the state were located in the Kansas City or St. Louis areas:

• No. 1 — Metro Academic and Classical High, St Louis
• No. 2 — Lincoln College Prep, Kansas City
• No. 3 — Ladue Horton Watkins High, Ladue
• No. 4 — Ewing Marion Kauffman High, Kansas City
• No. 5 — Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience, St. Louis
• No. 6 — Clayton High, Clayton
• No. 7 — Lafayette Senior High, Rockwood
• No. 8 — Kirkwood Senior High, Kirkwood
• No. 9 — Parkway West High, Parkway
• No. 10 — Marquette Senior High, Rockwood

More:Springfield Public Schools honors top seniors from each high school, based on GPA

Where were Springfield schools ranked in Missouri?

There were no high schools from Springfield, or southwest Missouri, in the state's Top 10. However, 11 area high schools made the state's Top 100:

• No. 30 — Nixa High, Nixa
• No. 55 — Spokane High, Spokane
• No. 61 — Ozark High, Ozark
• No. 63 — Webb City High, Webb City
• No. 68 — Branson High, Branson
• No. 80 — Neosho High, Neosho
• No. 86 — Fordland High, Fordland
• No. 87 — Central High, Springfield
• No. 95 — Republic High, Republic
• No. 96 — Fair Play High, Fair Play
• No. 97 — Monett High, Monett

In Missouri, the only Springfield high school to crack the Top 100 was Central. Kickapoo was ranked No. 139 and Glendale was ranked No. 296. Hillcrest and Parkview were not assigned a specific rank.

More:Missouri high school bans student cell phones, smartwatches starting April 4

Claudette Riley is the education reporter for the News-Leader. Email news tips to criley@news-leader.com.

mitchellwhady1951.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/education/2022/04/26/best-high-school-springfield-area-nixa-high-school-2022-missouri-rankings/7438492001/

Share this post