New Canaaan High 17th Best in State, US News Says

U.S. News magazine's latest rankings of public high schools across the country puts New Canaan High School at No. 17 on the Connecticut list.

Nationwide, New Canaan High School was ranked 480th best, overall, out of more than 19,400 schools examined.

In terms of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), Staples ranked very high among the top schools in the country, at No. 64. Darien (No. 31, nationwide) ranked highest in Connecticut in that category.

The Academy of Aerospace and Engineering in Hartford ranks No. 1 in Connecticut, followed by Connecticut International Baccalaureate Academy in East Hartford, both public magnet schools. (The school in Hartford also ranks as the 5th best public magnet school in the United States; the East Hartford school is No. 10.)

Weston had the highest ranking non-magnet school in the state (at No. 3), and the next highest rank in Fairfield County was Wilton High School, at No. 6.

Other high-ranking Fairfield County high schools include Ridgefield (No. 8), Westport's Staples (9), Darien (12), Redding-Easton's Joel Barlow (13) and Greenwich (15). Most other high-performing schools in the state were in Fairfield County or in the western Hartford suburbs.

New Canaan had a student-teacher ratio of 13:1, which was better than some other schools among the top 20 in Connecticut (Avon, Simsbury, Ridgefield and Wilton, for instance) but worse than most others.

The magazine used a formula weighing how many students took Advanced Placement exams and how many passed. Under that formula, New Canaan  received a score of 47.7 for "College Readiness".

That compares with 100 for the Academy of Aerospace and Engineering and 65.1 for Weston. None of the schools with higher overall rankings than New Canaan had a lower "College Readiness" score than New Canaan's.

Proficiency in math and reading was based on each state's "exit exam."

"We compared each school's math and reading proficiency rates for disadvantaged students with the statewide results for these student groups and then selected schools that were performing better than this state average," the magazine said in a description of its methodology for ranking schools.

New Canaan scored 4.3 in math and 4.4 in reading (identical to 9th-ranked Staples High School in Westport) under the magazine's scoring system, compared with Wilton's 4.3 in math and 4.2 in reading. The Academy of Aerospace and Engineering scored lower than that: 3.9 and 4.1. Weston also scored lower, at 4.3 and 4.3.