BANGOR, Maine - U.S. News and World Report's annual ranking of the best public high schools in the nation includes 17 in Maine. On this year's list are some of the regular top performers, such as Cape Elizabeth, Falmouth, Yarmouth and Camden Hills. The list, though, also includes five Maine high schools that are receiving the honor for the first time.
The rankings are based on data from the 2012-2013 school year. U.S. News ranked just under 20,000 high schools nationwide, using three main criteria: their performance in math and reading on state assessment tests, whether their population of disadvantaged students are outperforming poor students statewide and how well high schools are preparing kids for college.
The five first timers on Maine's list of 17 top performers include Brewer High School, Boothbay Regional High and Madawaska, Gorham and Sanford High Schools.
"I was quite incredulous at first. I said, 'This is amazing!' " says David Theoharides, the superintendent in Sanford, where 60 percent of the more than 900 students at the local high school are on free and reduced lunch. "You know, you always anticipate that it's going to be the wealthier schools along the coast and so forth. And to see a community like Sanford that's a hardworking, blue collar community, to be able to be one of the top schools in Maine is just fantastic."
Theoharides says part of the credit for Sanford making this list lies in a move over the past five years towards proficiency-based education. The high school was helped along in this process a few years ago by a grant from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation. "Their grant provided us with opportunity for more professional development for our high school teachers and for all of our teachers."
Students at Sanford High still trail their peers statewide on official measures, like reading and math proficiency. But Theoharides says the community, as a whole, is firmly behind the positive changes that have been taking place.
As proof, he points to fundraising efforts in the community that have helped Sanford add to its always-tight education budget. At Brewer High School, which was fifth on the U.S. News list for Maine schools, Jay McIntire credits an effort to reform the district's elementary and middle school offerings. McIntire is Brewer's superintendent.
"I would point to the opening of the Brewer Community School," McIntire says. The school opened several years ago. It replaced a handful of smaller buildings that dated back to the 1920's and features a sleek performing arts center and a green design, where the building is divided into several wings that represent different parts of Maine's history.
"It brought all of our students together into one very large school," McIntire says, "where we can provide broader access to opportunities through the facilities that are available and those students have now moved into Brewer High School," better prepared, the thinking goes, than in the past.
Recent data show that the graduation rate in Maine for students on free and reduced lunch continues to inch up. And Maine Education Commissioner Tom Desjardin says the inclusion of schools such as Sanford and Brewer High on the U.S. News list is especially heartening to education officials in Augusta.
"There are still schools out there that are ignoring those challenges, if you will, and succeeding anyway," Desjardin says. "And I think those that are identified in this study get a lot more credit for that because, despite those challenges, they're doing real well."
Yarmouth High was number one on the magazine's list of top Maine schools, followed by Falmouth, Cape Elizabeth and Wells.