Posted: Sat, 25 Jun 2011 12:00 AM - 14,543 Readers

By: Austin-American Statesman

Central Texas has earned national bragging rights, thanks to seven public schools that have been ranked by Newsweek magazine as being among the best 500 high schools in America this year.

• The Liberal Arts and Science Academy in Northeast Austin ranked 21st
• Anderson High School in West Austin was No. 474
• Westwood High School in the Round Rock district ranked at No. 47
• Eanes' Westlake High was 72nd
• Dripping Springs High School was No. 361
• Lake Travis High School ranked No. 488

Congratulations to all of those schools. Kudos also are in order for a charter school that made Newsweek's list: Harmony Science Academy in Pflugerville, which was No. 144 on the list. It's worth noting that the School of Science and Engineering, a magnet high school in Dallas, ranked No. 1. We congratulate them.

For more than a decade, the magazine has been ranking the nation's top 500 public high schools. But this year, Newsweek changed its methodology to reflect shifting trends and highlight what successful schools are doing to meet new challenges that include cutbacks in education spending and high-stakes testing.

"Rather than focus, as in the past, on one metric (AP tests taken per graduate), we consulted a group of experts ... to develop a yardstick that fully reflects a school's success turning out college-ready (and life-ready) students," Newsweek reported.

Those experts are Wendy Kopp, founder and CEO of Teach for America; Tom Vander Ark, CEO of Open Education Solutions and former director of education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford University professor of education and founder of the School Redesign Network.

The Harmony Science Academy in Pflugerville was among "Ten Miracle High Schools," included on the list that were singled out for additional recognition because they succeeded in educating and graduating a majority of low-income students who performed at high levels. In highlighting those schools, Newsweek hoped to point out what is working well in hopes that other schools would adopt similar strategies and practices.

The Harmony public charter school in Pflugerville has a small student body: just over 200 students with an average class size of 12 to 13 students per teacher, and 86 percent of the school's graduates enrolled in college. Sixty percent of students at Harmony qualify for free and reduced price lunch. Those figures are for the 2009-10 school year.

Some schools, like the Dallas School of Science and Engineering, offer extended school days and tutoring to students. And some, such as the South Texas High School for Health Professions in Mercedes, focus on certain areas of study.

In Texas, we've seen a huge shift in the educational landscape. For the first time in recent history, the Legislature is not funding enrollment growth for public schools. That has left schools billions of dollars short in education funding.

At the same time, more low-income students are showing up in our classrooms. It's worth examining what successful schools are doing to cope with those trends. And it helps that several of those schools are right here in our backyards.

Give them a hand.

*  Story Contributed by: Austin-American Statesman