Newsweek Ranks Brookwood High Among Nation's Top Schools

Newsweek named Brookwood High School among the top 500 high schools in the nation this week.

The magazine enlisted a panel of experts to rate the country’s best high schools, finding to be No. 149. Brookwood was one of just two schools in the county to make the list. Parkview High School in Lilburn was the other school. Also, there were just 12 schools across the state to receive the distinction as one of the nation's top high schools.

The Newsweek panel is composed of Wendy Kopp of Teach for America;  Tom Vander Ark of Open Education Solutions and the former executive director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford professor and founder of School Redesign Network. The panel rates the schools based on their rates of graduation, college matriculation, advance-placement courses offered and taken and SAT and ACT scores, as well as AP/IB/AICE scores.

According to Newsweek, Brookwood High School stands out for its student-teacher ratio of 18.5 students for every teacher and for its 98 percent graduation rate. Brookwood's student-teacher ratio was found to be the fourth best among schools ranked for the state. In addition, the magazine also found that most all the seniors -- 96 percent -- graduated and were headed for college. Brookwood High School also stood out for having an average SAT score of 1651.

Last year, the school was ranked No. 453, moving up substantially in the 2011 rankings. In 2009, the school was also among the top 500 high schools in the country with a ranking of 494.