A national media company ranked Bangor High School the 13th best high school in Maine in an annual evaluation of more than 17,000 high schools across the United States.
U.S. News and World Report released its 2023 rankings of the best high schools in the country on Tuesday. The high schools — 111 of which are in Maine — were evaluated based on students who earned exceptional scores on state assessments for math, reading and science.
Other criteria such as underserved student performance, college readiness, curriculum breadth and graduation rates were also taken under consideration, according to U.S. News. College readiness is a measure of student participation in and performance on Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate exams, and underserved student performance focuses on students who are Black, Hispanic or from low-income households.
While Bangor High School ranked well compared with other Maine high schools, U.S. News noted very few schools in the state ranked in the top 25th percentile of schools nationwide. Only three, or 2.7 percent, of the state’s high schools scored in the top 25 percent of schools nationwide, putting Maine in the second lowest position when compared with other states, ranking above only Oklahoma.
Bangor High School ranked 7,859 out of the more than 17,000 high schools across the country included in the list, a marked improvement from the high school’s ranking of 8,231 last year. The school, however, maintained its position as the 13th best high school in the state from last year’s U.S. News rankings.
Most of the top 10 high schools in Maine are in the southern part of the state, with Greely High School in Cumberland maintaining its first place spot from 2022. Kennebunk High School and Cape Elizabeth High School nabbed the second and third place rankings, respectively.
Bangor High School has 1,114 students this year and is the only public high school in Bangor, Maine’s third largest city, according to data from the Maine Department of Education.
While Bangor High School has boasted a vigorous curriculum, the school has been working in recent years to increase its four-year graduation rate to 90 percent, a goal the school department set for itself in its 10-year strategic plan published in 2020.
Last year, Bangor High School reached that goal, when the class of 2022 had a 89.86-percent four-year graduation rate, the highest in the district’s history.
About 59 percent of Bangor High School graduates were enrolled in college last year, a dip from the nearly 68 percent enrolled in 2021, according to the Maine DOE.
Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified which schools were included in U.S. News and World Report’s rankings. These rankings include the best high schools in the country.