Staples High School Ranked 9th Best in CT by US News

U.S. News magazine's latest rankings of public high schools across the country puts Westport's Staples High School at No. 9 on the Connecticut list.

Nationwide, Staples was ranked 303rd best, overall.

In terms of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), Staples ranked very high among the top schools in the country, at No. 62. Darien (No. 31, nationwide) ranked highest in Connecticut in that category.

The Academy of Aerospace and Engineering in Hartford ranks No. 1 in Connecticut, followed by Connecticut International Baccalaureate Academy in East Hartford, both public magnet schools. (The school in Hartford also ranks as the 5th best public magnet school in the United States; the East Hartford school is No. 10.)

Weston had the highest ranking non-magnet school in the state (at No. 3), and the next highest rank in Fairfield County was Wilton High School, at No. 6.

Other high-ranking Fairfield County high schools are Ridgefield (No. 8), Darien (12), Redding-Easton's Joel Barlow (13), Greenwich (15) and New Canaan (17). Most other high-performing schools in the state were in Fairfield County or in the western Hartford suburbs.

Among the 20 top-ranked high schools in Connecticut, Westport's student-teacher ratio of 12:1 was one of the best in the state, beaten only by Lyme-Old Lyme High School (10:1) along with Darien and Amistad Academy (a magnet school in New Haven), which each had 11:1. (Among the schoosl ranked between 21 and 40, several others had the same or better ratio.)

The magazine used a formula weighing how many students took Advanced Placement exams and how many passed. Under that formula, Staples received a score of 56.4 for "College Readiness". That compares with 100 for the Academy of Aerospace and Engineering and 65.1 for Weston.

Proficiency in math and reading was based on each state's "exit exam."

"We compared each school's math and reading proficiency rates for disadvantaged students with the statewide results for these student groups and then selected schools that were performing better than this state average," the magazine said in a description of its methodology for ranking schools.

Westport scored 4.3 in math and 4.4 in reading under the magazine's scoring system, compared with Wilton's 4.3 in math and 4.2 in reading. The Academy of Aerospace and Engineering scored lower than that: 3.9 and 4.1. Weston scored 4.3 and 4.3.