Publication ranks Northwest Arkansas' Haas Hall 60th best high school in nation

NWA Democrat-Gazette/DAVID GOTTSCHALK Eliza Osborne (from right), a junior at Haas Hall Academy, and Johanna Berryman, a senior, work Tuesday on a color scheme watercolor composition in Basil Seymour-Davies’ art class at the Starr Scholar Center in Fayetteville. The Fayetteville campus has been ranked as the top public high school in the state and is 60th in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.
NWA Democrat-Gazette/DAVID GOTTSCHALK Eliza Osborne (from right), a junior at Haas Hall Academy, and Johanna Berryman, a senior, work Tuesday on a color scheme watercolor composition in Basil Seymour-Davies’ art class at the Starr Scholar Center in Fayetteville. The Fayetteville campus has been ranked as the top public high school in the state and is 60th in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.

Haas Hall Academy of Fayetteville cracked the top 100 in the latest rankings of the nation's high schools by U.S. News & World Report.

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NWA Democrat-Gazette/DAVID GOTTSCHALK Jackson Wisdon, a freshman at Haas Hall, gives a presentation Tuesday on using the production possibility curve in Rebecca Moll’s economics class at the Starr Scholar Center in Fayetteville. The Fayetteville campus has been ranked as the top public high school in the state and is 60th in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.

The 2017 rankings, released this week, put Haas Hall at No. 60 in the nation, up from No. 116 last year. The charter school, which opened in 2004, also is ranked the best high school in Arkansas for the sixth straight year.

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Top high schools

U.S. News & World Report’s 2017 list of Arkansas’ top 10 high schools. Their national ranking is listed in parentheses.

  1. Haas Hall Academy, Fayetteville (60)
  2. Arkansas Arts Academy, Rogers (576)
  3. Parkview Magnet High School, Little Rock (807)
  4. Rogers High School (859)
  5. Bentonville High School (984)
  6. Central High School, Little Rock (993)
  7. Prairie Grove High School (1,116)
  8. Fayetteville High School (1,156)
  9. Southside High School, Fort Smith (1,438)
  10. Heritage High School, Rogers (1,508)

Source: U.S. News & World Report

Martin Schoppmeyer, the school's founder and superintendent, said they plan to have a pizza party at both the Fayetteville and Bentonville campuses of Haas Hall to celebrate the honor.

"I think every time your institution gets national attention, it helps with people wanting to attend as well as with colleges and with scholarships," Schoppmeyer said.

Seven of the state's top 10 high schools are in Northwest Arkansas, according to the publication's rankings.

Arkansas Arts Academy, a charter school for grades kindergarten through 12 in Rogers, has the state's second best high school and No. 576 nationally. That's a significant leap from last year when it placed eighth in the state and No. 1,834 nationally.

It's the smallest of the schools in the state's top 10 with about 220 students.

Mary Ley, the arts academy's CEO, praised high school principal Barb Padgett and her staff for the jobs they've done. Padgett regularly communicates with parents about how their students are performing academically, Ley said.

Ley also pointed to a strong integration of the arts into the curriculum as a reason for the school's success.

"I think it's made a difference," she said.

Arkansas Arts Academy is preparing for a massive overhaul of its high school campus that involves demolition, renovation and new construction. The project will start this summer and take about 18 months.

Rogers, Bentonville, Prairie Grove, Fayetteville and Rogers Heritage high schools also made U.S. News' list of the top 10 in the state.

It's the first time Fayetteville High School, ranked eighth, has made the state's top 10 since U.S. News began publishing high school rankings in 2012.

"We're excited about that," said Chad Scott, Fayetteville High School principal. "We look forward to working hard to improve student achievement and hopefully get a higher ranking in the future."

Bentonville High School's rank of fifth in the state is its lowest since the rankings began. The school previously had finished either second or third each year.

Rogers High and Heritage High schools both have made the top 10 multiple times. Prairie Grove made it once before in 2015.

Haas Hall operates a Fayetteville and Bentonville campus. It's opening two more campuses -- one in Rogers and one in Springdale -- this fall. Haas Hall's total enrollment is expected to grow from 650 to around 1,200 students, Schoppmeyer said.

As open-enrollment charter schools, Haas Hall and Arkansas Arts Academy are public schools open to any student in the state. There is no tuition.

U.S. News & World Report teamed with North Carolina-based RTI International, a global nonprofit social science research firm, to produce its high school rankings. This year's rankings are based on data from the 2014-15 school year.

The ranking's methodology was based on the 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 to show it is successfully educating its students across a range of performance indicators, according to the publication's website.

A four-step process determined the rankings. The first three steps ensured the schools serve all of their students well, using their performance on math and reading portions of state proficiency tests and their graduation rates as benchmarks.

Schools that made it past those three steps were further assessed on how well they prepare students for college-level work. Advanced Placement test data were used as the benchmark for success. Advanced Placement is a College Board program that offers college-level courses at high schools across the country.

NW News on 04/26/2017

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