Achieve Early College High also among best
Texas Border Business
Two McAllen ISD high schools are nationally ranked and one of them is in the top 10.
Lamar Academy is ranked ninth in the country in the 2015 Best High Schools rankings of 29,000 high schools by U.S. News & World Report. No other Valley schools were ranked in the top 40.
The best schools were ranked into Gold, Silver and Bronze categories. Achieve Early College High School, which is a candidate for a National Blue Ribbon award, earned a Bronze.
The top 10 schools scored the highest out of the 500 top-ranked gold medal schools.
The criteria centered on performance on state assessments for reading and math, the performance of disadvantaged students on those same assessments and the degree to which schools prepare students for college by offering a college-level curriculum.
Serving students from all three traditional high schools (McAllen High, McAllen Memorial and James “Nikki” Rowe), Lamar Academy is home to McAllen ISD’s International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. It was the first Valley school district to offer this prestigious program in 2001. Graduates with this advanced academic diploma can receive up to 24 college credit hours at state universities in Texas at no charge to families thanks to a 2005 Senate Bill.
Since the first class of IB Diploma graduates in 2003, McAllen ISD students have earned more than 440 IB Diplomas. The student IB Diploma earning rate is 98.7 per cent – one of the highest on the globe. In fact, the world average in 2014 was 79.3 per cent.
In March, the Director IB Americas, Drew Deutsch, visited McAllen ISD to study the district’s Programme and practices. Deutsch oversees the IB in North and South America.
Lamar also serves students in the district’s Options in Education High School – an alternative school that allows students to accelerate their learning to graduate early or to catch up if behind on credits.
McAllen ISD opened the Achieve Early College High in 2008. Through a partnership with South Texas College, it is based at STC’s campus on Pecan Blvd. In fact, it is the only ECHS in the Valley to be housed on a college campus. Students are able to attend college while attending high school for dual credit (counts for both high school and college requirements) with the added bonus of taking courses within STC’s modern facilities.
Achieve Early College High School is a Texas Education Agency Rewards School – the highest category on state testing. In fact, it is the top ECHS in partnership with STC having awarded the most Associate Degrees.
The school has also been nominated for national 2015 Blue Ribbon Schools recognition, a U.S. Department of Education program recognizing public and private elementary, middle and high schools where students perform at very high levels. Achieve is one of just 26 schools in the state to be nominated for the Blue Ribbon.
Many students in McAllen ISD, including those at Lamar and Achieve, also take Advanced Placement exams for college credit. In fact, the Class of 2014 collectively earned at least 16,230 college credit hours from all sources and methods.
This report was produced for U.S. News & World Report by RTI International — one of the world’s leading independent, nonprofit research and development organizations, according to its website. This 2015 version of the rankings uses data from the 2012–13 school year.
