ORANGE COUNTY, Calif. — Three public high schools in Southern California are ranked among the state and the nation's best.
Gretchen Whitney High School in Cerritos is the No. 1 school in California, California Academy of Mathematics and Science in Carson is No. 2 and Oxford Academy in Cypress is No. 3, according to U.S. News & World Report.
The schools ranked No. 14, 15, and 16, respectively, nationally.
Tuesday's annual education report ranks more than 17,800 schools nationally, statewide and locally.
The report evaluates the schools based on college readiness, state assessment proficiency and performance, underserved student performance, college curriculum, and graduation rate.
"The Best High Schools rankings take a comprehensive approach to evaluating schools," said Eric Brooks, principal data analyst at U.S. News, in a news release. "Looking at factors like graduation rates and underserved student performance, families can use this information to learn more about their local schools."
The rankings come amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has upended how high schools perform, educate and assess their students.
U.S. News officials said they had to adjust specific calculations due to the cancellation of state testing in spring 2020 because of the pandemic. U.S. News also had to incorporate mathematics and reading assessment results from the three previous years' rankings because state assessment data from the 2019-2020 year was unavailable.
The new report found that Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia, Academic Magnet High School in South Carolina, and Signature School in Indiana were the top three high schools.
The states with the highest high school graduation rates were Iowa, Kentucky and Texas, with 94% of their students graduating in 2020. The report states that Arizona ranked last, with 74% of its students graduating in the 2019-2020 academic year.
Meanwhile, California only graduated 86% of its students in 2020.
With 945 school districts and more than 2,500 high schools, California ranked fourth in the nation in school performance. The U.S. News ranked more than 1,600 public high schools in the state.
According to U.S. News, more than 41% of the state's high schools were ranked in the top 25% nationally.
The top three schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District were Harbor Teacher Preparation Academy, which is ranked No. 4 in the state; Downtown Business High School, the 24th in the state; and Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, ranked 28th in California.
Long Beach Unified School District had three schools in the top 53 in the state.
With a 100% graduation rate, the California Academy of Mathematics and Science was ranked No. 1 in the district and No. 2 in California. Eunice Sato Academy of Math and Sciences is No. 2 in the district with a 96% graduation rate, and Ernest S. McBride Sr. High School ranked No. 53 statewide.
In Orange County, Oxford Academy took top billing. Followed by Troy High School in Fullerton, ranked No. 26 in the state, and the Orange County School of the Arts in Santa Ana ranked No. 38.
In the Inland Empire, Riverside Stem Academy is ranked No. 10 in the state and No. 100 nationally. Western Center Academy in Hemet ranked No. 15.
You can see the U.S. News report here.