Both high schools make list as “America’s Best”
Both E.C. Glass High School and Heritage High School are two of “America’s Best High Schools” for 2010, according to Newsweek magazine, although, right now, through a mistake by the magazine, only one is listed in the online rankings. E.C. Glass is listed at 735 in the magazine’s ranking but, because of its miscalculations, Newsweek did not place Heritage High School on the list. Lynchburg City School administrators were told by Newsweek contributing editor, Jay Mathews, that the omission was a mistake. In an email to LCS this morning Mr. Mathews wrote:
“You gave me the information in plenty of time, and I transmitted it to New York. But in the rush of preparing the entire list I failed to personally check the planned Web site version to make sure your information had been recorded there. Please accept my apologies… We will place Heritage on the list, with an index rating of 1.745, a subsidized lunch percentage of 51 and an equity and excellence percentage of 20.1 when we do our regular update of the list in a month. I am sorry you have to wait so long, but this is the way we make sure that the list that is up the rest of the year is fully accurate, and includes smaller schools that we had missed in our search for more qualifiers, but who identified themselves to us when they saw the new list.”
According to calculations by Heritage High School Principal Dr. Mark Miear, the school’s ranking on Newsweek’s list should be close to 860. That ranking would be a notable and significant accomplishment when compared to last year’s ranking of 1453. The Heritage High School staff worked diligently all year in an effort to boost in their ranking.
In general, the rankings are based on the number of Advanced Placement courses and exams that students participate in and the number of advanced diplomas that students earn each year.