Three high schools from Irving Independent School District have received the Silver Badge Award from U.S. News and World Report for being named among the country’s top performing high schools.
MacArthur and Irving High Schools, along with Jack E. Singley Academy, all received the “Best High School 2012 Silver Badge,” and Singley also won a “Most Connected” award. Singley was ranked among the top 4% of high schools in the country while MacArthur and Irving were both ranked among the top 7.6%.
“We are extremely proud to be among this elite group of high schools,” said Irving ISD Superintendent Dr. Dana Bedden. “It demonstrates the commitment of our students, teachers and administrators, all working with families to achieve academic excellence and equity for all.”
The high schools competed against more than 22,000 high schools in 49 states and the District of Columbia. Many of the top-ranked schools screen and select individual students based on academic qualifications. Irving and MacArthur high schools take all students within their geographic zones and Singley bases its enrollment on a lottery to maintain its diverse character. Irving High School has 87% minority enrollment, Singley 86% and MacArthur 79%.
According to the U.S. News press release, “The goal is to provide a clear, unbiased picture of how well public schools serve all of their students—from the highest achieving to the lowest achieving—in preparing them to demonstrate proficiency in basic skills as well as readiness for college-level work.”
To produce the rankings, U.S. News teamed up with the Washington, D.C.-based American Institutes for Research (AIR), one of the largest behavioral and social science research organizations in the world. AIR implemented U.S. News's comprehensive rankings methodology, which is based on the key principles that a great high school must serve all of its students well, not just those who are college-bound, and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes.
A three-step process determined the Best High Schools. The first two steps ensured that the schools serve all of their students well, using performance on state proficiency tests as the benchmarks. For those schools that made it past the first two steps, a third step assessed the degree to which schools prepare students for college-level work.
