Varnado High School has been awarded a bronze medal in U.S. News and World Report’s 2009 list of best public high schools.

The magazine analyzed more than 21,000 schools nationwide, ranking the top 100 with a “gold” award. Other top schools analyzed were awarded with a silver, bronze or honorable mention.

VHS joins 38 other high schools in Louisiana to make the list. Thirty-three schools, including Northshore High in Slidell, earned bronze and four Louisiana schools earned a silver ranking. One school in the state �” Benjamin Franklin Senior High in New Orleans �” earned gold.

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“Varnado High School has made the national news,” VHS Principal Emma Ross told The Daily News in an e-mail last week. “We are the only school in Washington Parish to be recognized as one of the country’s best high schools. �- We are very proud to be in this number.”

“The 2009 U.S.News & World Report America's Best High Schools methodology, developed by School Evaluation Services, a K-12 education data research business run by Standard & Poor's, is based on the key principles that a great high school must serve all its students well, not just those who are bound for college and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes to show that the school is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators,” according to the magazine’s web site, usnews.com.

The findings can also be found in the magazine’s print edition, dated Dec. 15-22, 2008.

“We analyzed 21,069 public high schools in 48 states using data from the 2006-2007 school year. This is the total number of public high schools in each state that had grade-12 enrollment and sufficient data to analyze primarily for the 2006-2007 school year. A three-step process determined the best high schools,” according to the magazine. “The first two steps ensured that the schools serve all their students well, using state proficiency standards as the measuring 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.”

According to the rankings, Varnado scored 1.84 in “poverty-adjusted permorance index” and 20.1 for “disadvantaged students performance gap. In the third step, “college readiness index,” Varnado’s rating was “not applicable.”

Under the demographic data, the magazine listed VHS has having 172 students, with a minority enrollment of 72.7 percent and disadvantaged student enrollment of 95.5 percent.

To qualify for a bronze medal, schools “either do not offer AP or IB or do not achieve a college readiness index of at least 20 but successfully meet the other two key performance indicator criteria,” the magazine reported.

"We are very proud to have so many of our state's high schools included on the list," said Louisiana Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek. "Considering the tremendous role our high schools play in preparing our young people to succeed in post-secondary education and careers, it is beneficial to be included in this study and encouraging that the examination resulted in such a positive report for our state."

The list of Bronze Medal Schools in Louisiana includes Anacoco High School, Arcadia High School and Castor High School (Bienville Parish), Avoyelles High School, Avoyelles Public Charter School and Marksville High School (Avoyelles Parish), Berwick High School (St. Mary Parish), Calvin High School (Winn Parish), Chalmette High School (St. Bernard Parish), Ebard High School, Florien High School and Zwolle High School (Sabine Parish), Forest School and Kilbourne High School (West Carroll Parish), Gueydan High School (Vermilion Parish), Harrisonburg High School and Sicily Island High School (Catahoula Parish), and Hathaway High School (Jefferson Davis Parish).

Also on the list of Bronze Medal winners were Holden High School (Livingston Parish), Hornbeck High School and Pitkin High School (Vernon Parish), Lafayette High School (Lafayette Parish), Loreauville High School (Iberia Parish), Lusher Charter School (Orleans Parish), Mamou High School (Evangeline Parish), McKinley Senior High School (East Baton Rouge Parish), Northshore High School (St. Tammany Parish), Phoenix High School (Plaquemines Parish), Starks High School (Calcasieu Parish), St. James High School (St. James Parish), Varnado High School (Washington Parish), West Feliciana High School (West Feliciana Parish), Weston High School (Jackson Parish), and Winnfield Senior High School (Winnfield Parish).

Four Louisiana high schools earned silver medals, including Baton Rouge High School (East Baton Rouge Parish), Bolton High School (Rapides Parish), Caddo Parish Magnet High School (Caddo Parish), and LSU Laboratory School (East Baton Rouge Parish). All total, 10 percent o f the state's schools that were evaluated earned a medal distinction -- landing Louisiana at No. 17 in terms of the percentage of schools in each state recognized on the list, according to the state Department of education.