Congratulations to St. Andrew’s School – the Pre-K 3 through 12th grade independent private school on Wilmington Island – for receiving recognition as one of the most challenging U.S. high schools.

For the first time, the Washington Post’s education columnist Jay Mathews included private schools on his annual list of most challenging high schools. St. Andrew’s received the following rankings:
• 8th in Georgia
• 16th for all private schools in the nation
• 249th out of 1,926 public and private schools in America

Read the list of most challenging high schools by clicking here.

“We know that our students benefit from a challenging program that encourages them to fulfill their academic,” said Sara Rubinstein, Upper School Head. “Whereas some schools only believe in letting a small percentage of their students into IB or AP courses, we believe any student admitted to St Andrew’s should have the opportunity to pursue their ambitions in the classroom.”

St. Andrew’s is the only Savannah school to be recognized in the top ten for the state of Georgia and the highest ranked public or private school in the region.

The Challenge Index is determined by dividing the total number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Advanced International Certificate of Education tests given at a school each year by the number of seniors graduating in the spring.

Mathews noted in his article that private schools are not as forthcoming with releasing this type of information. He applauds those private schools that are willing to share the data and open themselves up to comparison.

Kudos also to Savannah Arts Academy, a public school which ranked 29th in Georgia & 604^th out of 1,926 public and private schools in America.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2012 at 1:21 pm and is filed under Development/Education, Parenting News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.