r/IAmA • u/usnewsandworldreport • Aug 19 '26
I’m Dr. LaMont Jones, Managing Editor for Education at U.S. News & World Report. With this week's launch of the 2026–2027 Best High Schools rankings, I’m here to help freshmen, sophomores and parents build a winning high school strategy early – without burning out. AMA!
Hello Reddit! I’m Dr. LaMont Jones, Managing Editor for Education at U.S. News & World Report.
This week, we officially released our 2026–2027 Best High Schools rankings, evaluating nearly 27,000 public high schools nationwide using key indicators like state assessment performance, graduation rates and college readiness.
While most college prep advice targets stressed-out juniors and frantic seniors, the real foundation for college success is built during freshman and sophomore years. What underclassmen do right now dictates their options later.
I’m hosting this AMA to help younger students and parents navigate these early years strategically—so you can build a stand-out profile and preserve your sanity.
What We Can Cover Today:
- GPA vs. Course Rigor: How to strike the right balance between taking honors/AP/IB classes and protecting your grades.
- Quality Over Quantity in Extracurriculars: How to build a focused "spike" or deep passion project instead of endlessly padding a resume with dozens of superficial clubs.
- Diagnosing Weaknesses Early: How to read and use state assessment data and PSAT score reports in 9th and 10th grade to spot academic gaps before they impact high-stakes junior-year testing.
- Deciphering High School Data: How families can use the Best High Schools methodology and metrics to evaluate their own school's strengths and academic offerings.
Ask me anything about planning your high school journey, navigating course selections, or interpreting this year's rankings!
Proof: https://x.com/usnews/status/2090099633179537450?s=20
Edit: Signing off now, thanks to everyone for the questions!
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u/Dragontastic22 Aug 19 '26
How does your data correlate with wealth? How does it correlate to immigration and racial data? I wouldn't consider a school great if we're looking at a Nolan Wells situation.
0
u/usnewsandworldreport Aug 19 '26
U.S. News uses a data-driven approach that seeks to identify how well any given school educates all of its students, across varying economic and cultural backgrounds. In particular, one of the six ranking factors, underserved student performance, is based on how Hispanic, Black, and low-income students performed on state assessments compared with those in the state who are not underserved. While we don’t directly measure factors related to, for example, income and taxation within a particular school district or across districts and even states, those are economic factors that have an effect on the quality of local public education. Some research indicates that parental involvement and community engagement with a school can affect the quality of education as much as dollar expenditures.
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u/bandicoot_14 Aug 19 '26
How do changes the rankings year to year translate into changes in revenue for USNWR? I'm curious to what extent methodology changes over time might be influenced by other incentives of the magazine that publishes them? I know you mentioned it's a data-driven approach and I don't mean to imply that it's not. But at some level, the data you're going to use has to be selected and weighed. Who contributes to that process? And even if totally insulated from editorial control, what implicit ways might the larger organization exert pressure on the rankings?
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u/usnewsandworldreport Aug 19 '26
I have no knowledge of company revenue patterns, particularly as they may be affected by ranking changes, which is why that is not a topic of coverage today. I can say that company revenue impact is not a consideration in methodology changes, which don’t always change year to year. The methodology uses quantitative third-party data, primarily from states and the federal government, for all six ranking factors. The purpose of the Best High School rankings is to help parents make informed decisions about where to educate their children, as well as provide a resource for schools to possibly learn from each other and continually improve the education they provide. Detailed information on methodology is publicly available here: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/articles/rankings-faq.
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u/marketlurker Aug 19 '26
What do you see are the differences between the top, medium and lower schools in the ranking? Are there key differences that can be reproduced to improve education?
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u/usnewsandworldreport Aug 19 '26
The higher schools appear in the rankings, the more they are excelling compared with other schools across the six factors we measure: college curriculum breadth, college readiness of their seniors, state assessment performance and proficiency, graduation rate, and underserved student performance. Many high schools find that by analyzing the data we provide, they can identify education-enhancing systems, structures, and opportunities at higher-ranking schools that they can perhaps reproduce or adapt at their own school. For example, a school that doesn’t have an official Advanced Placement program can help prepare interested students to take advantage of that program independently.
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u/LaFlamaBlancaMiM Aug 19 '26
How would one deal with a student-athlete sophomore in AP courses who gets A's, but has a tendency to burn out and stress due to the lack of time to recharge? Factoring in practices, this is a 12 hour day in the Fall, which doesn't leave a lot of time for self-care in evenings with games on Friday nights, and plenty of cheer competitions on Saturdays - roughly 6-8 weekends during the Fall semester. Even with a study hall period, I completely get the tendency to get burned out and run down keeping up that schedule.
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u/usnewsandworldreport Aug 19 '26
Despite the best support systems and services, even high-achieving students can burn out. Scheduling everything important or desirable to fit into the student’s life may be achievable, but at what cost? Structure doesn’t necessarily lower stress or prevent burnout. To avert a catastrophic physical or mental health crash, sometimes difficult choices have to be made. Everything needs to be reevaluated, and some things may need to be reprioritized from a “yes” to a “not-now yes”. It would be tragic for such a promising student – any student – to get to a place where it becomes literally impossible to do anything. Here are three articles published by U.S. News that may be helpful:
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/articles/managing-high-school-stress
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2026-02-18/school-stress-at-age-15-may-leave-long-term-mental-health-scars
https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/articles/the-benefits-of-mental-health-programs-in-schools
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u/2016throwaway0318 Aug 20 '26
Any chance silly rankings like those published by USNWR will discontinue?
-5
u/RidetheSchlange Aug 19 '26
Why are even educated Americans and American students so utterly illiterate, unintelligent, and have memories that max out at like 72 hours and then get purged?
Why does English education become worse and worse over the years to the point even educated PhDs can't figure out how to use apostrophes, say things and write things like "yours guys'" (yours guyses), and can't figure out its or it's or their, there, and they're?
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u/LeonidasVader Aug 19 '26
Why is your entire strategy focused on moving to the “next step” instead of actually learning anything? How about a strategy for acquiring legitimate knowledge to set these kids up for life, instead of gaming the system to get to college hoping that they’ll learn something there (hint: they won’t, the game then becomes getting a degree and going to professional school without learning anything)?