The School District of New Berlin’s two high schools rank high on the U.S. News and World Report’s 2019 rankings, despite the online publication’s overhauled evaluation system.

New Berlin Eisenhower ranked fifth and West 16th among the 457 ranked high schools in Wisconsin, and 219th and 603rd nationally out of 17,245 ranked schools, according to the publication.

“Our high schools continue to perform at the highest levels, and we could not be more pleased about this achievement,” Superintendent Joe Garza said. “Our two high schools are in the top 3.5 percent of all ranked schools both in Wisconsin and across the country. Everyone involved – teachers at all levels, students, parents, the School Board, administrators, our educational partners and our community as a whole – should be proud.”

There were many changes to the U.S. News & World Report’s rankings methodology for 2019. In previous years, the rankings were based on a single factor: a school’s College Readiness index. Schools are now rated on the following six measures, with the weights used for each indicator in parentheses:

• College readiness (30%): percentage of 12th grades from the class of 2016-17 who took at least one Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) exam during high school and the
  percentage of 12th graders who passed at least one AP or IB exam in high school.
• College curriculum breadth (10%): The percentage of 12th graders from the class of 2016-17 who took a wide variety of AP and IB courses across the multiple disciplines and the percentage of 12th
  graders who passed them.
• Reading and math proficiency (20%): Measures how well students scored on state assessments that measure proficiency in reading and mathematics.
• Reading and math performance (20%): The difference between how students performed on state assessments and what U.S. News predicted based on a school's student body.
• Underserved student performance (10%): How well the student population receiving subsidized school lunch, and black and Hispanic populations perform on state assessments relative to statewide
  performance among students not in those subgroups.
• Graduation rate (10%): For the 2019 rankings, the graduation rate corresponds to the 2017 graduation cohort who would have entered ninth grade in the 2013-14 school year.

More than six times as many schools were ranked this year, compared to previous years. Additionally, the publication no longer assigns gold, silver or bronze badges to the rankings. Because of the changes, “the 2019 Best High Schools rankings results aren’t comparable to Best High Schools rankings U.S. News has published in the past,” according to the publication’s website.

To read the publication’s full methodology, click here. To see Wisconsin’s full list of high schools, click here.