(Washington, DC—November 30, 2007) U.S. News & World Report’s online news service has posted a thorough review and ranking of America’s Best High Schools on their website, and has placed County Prep among the top 1,500 schools in the country, from among more than 18,000. In his December 10, 2007 Letter to the Editor Brian Kelley, editor of the well respected national news magazine, introduced the study, stating that “Thanks to our partnership with School Evaluation Services, a unit of Standard & Poor's that collects and analyzes school data, it's possible to make an apples-to-apples comparison of individual high schools not only within each state but across the country.”

U.S. News & World Report, evaluated 18,790 public high schools in an attempt to determine which of the schools might be considered “Most Likely to Succeed?” in terms of their ability to “prepare students to achieve their post graduation goals.” Of importance to School Evaluation Services is the schools ability to “serve all its students well, not just those bound for college…it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes that show the school is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators.” In order to measure this quality, they evaluated the schools on three criteria: 1) how well did each school perform on state tests, adjusting for student circumstance, 2) how well does each school’s disadvantaged students fare, and 3) how successful is the school at providing college-level coursework.

County Prep, performs in all of these areas, and with a student population of 668 ninth through twelfth graders, of which 51% are minority and 48.5% are disadvantaged youth, it was particularly strong in the areas of Poverty-Adjusted Adjusted Performance Index and the Disadvantaged Students Performance Gap. These are indices that measure a) the relationship between poverty and disadvantage and performance on state tests, and then b) how well do County Prep students perform compared to students in the rest of the state with similar circumstances. In both criteria, County Prep performed better than the state norm.

In addition, County Prep performs well on measures of graduation rate, college preparedness and post graduation goals. According to the data provided by the Standard and Poor’s School Evaluation Service to the US News and World Report, in 2006, County Prep had a 100% graduation rate, compared to 93.7 statewide, and 98.5% of County Prep students aspired to college, with 31.8% going on to two year programs and 56.7% going on to four year schools. For their performance, US News and World Reports gave County Prep High School a Bronze medal, signaling that the school had earned a placement among the top 1,500 schools in the country.

Standard and Poor’s School Evaluation Service provided US News and World Reports with extensive information about each school, including County Prep. The details of their analysis are available at the SchoolMatters website.

Ms. Mendolla thanks and applauds the entire student body and staff for a job well done, and congratulates each and every one for well earned recognition!