Fayetteville-Manlius High School is one of the best high schools in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2021 Best High School rankings.
On April 27, U.S. News released its annual high school rankings, which place F-M High School 812th nationally out of 17,857 public high schools and 76th out of 1,218 high schools in New York state. It is ranked second in the Syracuse area out of 41 high schools.
Top-ranked schools have a high rate of students who scored above expectations in math and reading state assessments, passed an array of college-level exams and graduated in four years, according to U.S. News.
F-M is also included in U.S. News’ 2021 Best STEM High Schools, ranking 88th. To determine the top science, technology, engineering and math schools, U.S. News looked at the top 1,000 public schools from its Best High Schools rankings and then evaluated each school’s students’ participation and success in Advanced Placement science and math tests.
How are the rankings determined?
The ranking methodology uses state education data from the 2018-2019 school year, and additional data was provided by The College Board and International Baccalaureate on their respective college-prep programs, Advanced Placement and IB, according to U.S. News.
To produce the rankings, U.S. News teamed up with RTI International, a global nonprofit social science research firm. RTI implemented the U.S. News rankings methodology, which includes rating the following six measures:
- College readiness, based on the proportions of 12th grade students who took and earned a qualifying score on AP and/or IB exams;
- College curriculum breadth, based on proportions of 12th grade students who took and earned a qualifying score on AP and/or IB exams in multiple content areas;
- Math and reading proficiency, based on student performance on state-required tests;
- Math and reading performance, based on whether performance on state assessments exceeded expectations given the school’s proportion of underserved students;
- Underserved student performance, based on how Black, Hispanic and low-income students performed on state assessments compared with those who are not underserved in the state; and
- Graduation rate, based on the proportion of students who entered ninth grade in 2015-2016 and graduated four years later.