Tascosa makes the grade

Newsweek Magazine is to high school rankings what U.S. News & World Report is to college rankings. Newsweek today released its annual rankings of the top 1,500 public high schools in the nation.

The only area high school to make the cut was Tascosa. The Rebels, who also made the list in 2005 and 2006, came in at 1,410.

Rankings can be in the eye of the beholder, and determining the criteria can be subjective (if you can't tell, I'm trying to soften the blow for those who bleed Black and Gold, Orange and White, Silver and Black, or Blue and White in the city).

Jay Mathews of the Washington Post ranks the school according to a ratio: the number of Advanced Placement, Int. Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests taken by all studetns at a school in 2008 divided by the number of graduating seniors. All of the schools on the list have an index of at least 1.000.

Also included were subsidized lunches, which is the percentage of students receiving federally subsidized meals, and E&E, which is an equity and excellence percentage for the poriton of all graduating seniors at a school that had at least one passing grade on one AP or IB test.

Tascosa had an index of 1.074. Subsidized lunches was 30 percent, and E&E rating was 10.4 percent.

There were 113 public high schools in Texas that were included among the 1,500. The top were from Texas -- the Talented and Gifted School in Dallas, and the Science/Engineering Magnet School in Dallas.

What I would call the highest ranked true public school in Texas is Dallas Highland Park at No. 23. Also on the list was Lubbock High at 1,158.