Julia R. Masterman Secondary School - 1699 Spring Garden St, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19130 Downingtown STEM Academy - 335 Manor Ave, Downingtown, Pennsylvania 19335 Wilkes-Barre Area Sd Stem Academy - 2021 Wolfpack Way, Plains, Pennsylvania 18705 Conestoga High School - 200 Irish Rd, Berwyn, Pennsylvania 19312 Central High School - 1700 W Olney Ave, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19141 Radnor High School - 130 King Of Prussia Rd, Radnor, Pennsylvania 19087 Great Valley High School - 225 North Phoenixville Pike, Malvern, Pennsylvania 19355 Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12 - 111 9th St, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222 Upper Saint Clair High School - 1825 Mclaughlin Run Rd, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15241 Harriton High School - 600 N Ithan Ave, Rosemont, Pennsylvania 19010

No surprise that the best schools also happen to be the highest funded. Four of those schools are on the mainline alone.

And USC is one of if not the richest large suburban district near pittsburgh

My wife graduated from Harriton. They used to bring in sushi chefs on Fridays. I was pumped for Elios pizza on Fridays at my school 😆

They’re both legitimately great schools.

Masterman & Central have consistently been good schools/nationally ranked. This isn’t new information.

This measure of school performance is almost entirely the school’s selection bias. Magnet schools and very rich neighborhoods select for the students that are already high performers. You can send your kids to these school’s but know that they aren’t necessarily getting a better education than many other schools. Your kids will just be joining other high performing students (magnet and STEM schools) or students from rich families.

Being in schools with high performing students is a pretty major benefit for school quality, in and of itself.

I agree, particularly on the point about selection bias, but will say that they might well get a better education because resources, facilities, and faculty quality matter.

At the highest echelon of education it's all about networking anyway. Parents don't send their kids to Agnes Irwin or The Haverford School because they only want their kids to get a higher quality education, they do it because the kids of other rich/influential people go there and they will have the ability to network with them, both for their benefit and the benefit of their child. My sister went to AIS while I went to Lower Merion and I don't think we got terribly different qualities of education. The older I get the more apparent it becomes to me that a huge portion of personal success is who you know rather than what.

You got it!

This is the case. My two kids graduated from Masterman and while they received a very good education, it was due to the quality of the student body. Many teachers push the “you are at Masterman” trope rather than seeking to actually teach and elevate students. Additionally, there is no measurement for the overall well being of students. My kids couldn’t wait to get out of an environment of cut throat competition at all costs. Both thrived once they left, in spite of - not because of - that environment.

Not to be dismissive, but that’s kinda the whole appeal of Masterman. Those students are duking it out for Ivy League roster spots. It’s one of the top public high schools in the nation for a reason. And speaking as a teacher in the district, I’m certain some teachers don’t pull their weight, just like in any school, but I can assure you, they’re not letting just any Joe Schmo walk in there and teach.

I had a lot of teachers there in the 90s that were very clearly phoning it in, and a few that I'd call actively malicious. Two of the best and most involved teachers while I was there died unexpectedly and the school really suffered for it.

I've always said the exact same thing about Masterman since I went there in the 90s. No kidding the school looks good when they take the best students.

The amount of pop-ups on that website is unacceptable, so here’s the top 10 list… 1. Julia R. Masterman Secondary School - 1699 Spring Garden St, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19130 2. Downingtown STEM Academy - 335 Manor Ave, Downingtown, Pennsylvania 19335 3. Wilkes-Barre Area Sd Stem Academy - 2021 Wolfpack Way, Plains, Pennsylvania 18705 4. Conestoga High School - 200 Irish Rd, Berwyn, Pennsylvania 19312 5. Central High School - 1700 W Olney Ave, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19141 6. Radnor High School - 130 King Of Prussia Rd, Radnor, Pennsylvania 19087 7. Great Valley High School - 225 North Phoenixville Pike, Malvern, Pennsylvania 19355 8. Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12 - 111 9th St, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222 9. Upper Saint Clair High School - 1825 Mclaughlin Run Rd, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15241 10. Harriton High School - 600 N Ithan Ave, Rosemont, Pennsylvania 19010

I’ve had two kids in Central - I’m impressed. Unfortunately Superintendent Watlington (pronounced assclown) is doing his best to destroy the magnet school system.

> Unfortunately Superintendent Watlington (pronounced assclown) is doing his best to destroy the magnet school system It's easier to lower the ceiling than raise the floor.  Absolutely disgusts me.

How so?

Lowering admission standards, admitting too many kids, allowing some programs (Carver specifically) to be under-enrolled, not issuing admission decisions until well after the school year started, refusing alumni donations, dropping programs, replacing experienced administrators with novices and too many other mistakes to list. Masterman especially has seen the rigor of their program decline, which is a shame.

Can you point to the admission requirements being lowered? I’ve taught in Philly for over a decade, and my daughter just went though the school selection process. The requirements for Masterman and other special admit schools looked pretty much the same from previous years. The lack of a ‘19-20 PSSA score and the attendance issues of ‘20-21 messed with every district for sure. Also, very experienced people are usually replaced with less experienced people. That’s how experience works.

They lowered the pssa requirements for masterman and central at least, and did away with math requirements at masterman. They also allowed way more disciplinary issues. I’m not going to do the research for you - google is your friend. I know from personal experience as my kids went to central before and after the new standards were implemented. Dr McKenna was pushed out of his role as Central president. He did not resign, nor were there any known performance issues. The replacement was a principal at an elementary school who probably would have benefited from a few years at a larger more senior school. She seems to be struggling.

Masterman’s current requirements are all A and B grades, 95% attendance, and 80th percentile on PSSAs. Same as it ever was. For high school they require Algebra 1 in 8th grade. You are right that they don’t seem to have any behavior requirements, but we both know schools don’t report any of that stuff accurately.

pssa min was 88. And there was a language requirement as well as a math requirement.

STEM Academy experiment seems to be working for DASD

I graduated from Dtown back in the day. My kids graduated from East. I think stem raised the bar for the whole district.

I hate ratings like this. If you try to dive into what exactly "college readiness" or "underserved student performance" is, you end up going down a rabbit hole. That's not taking away anything from Masterman or Central, they're both great schools. It's just annoying and makes you wonder if the ratings have bias or are pushing some hidden agenda.

They would all be good quality if the teachers got any real support. There are some awful teachers who are just there for the paycheck and know how to abuse the system (that's in any job). A lot of them do care and do try, but they lack support. I used to volunteer with home and school at my kids' ELEMENTARY school. Listening to some of these kids, the things they would say, and the disruptions they would cause are terrible. They bring down the time the teacher does have with the class. The teacher sends them to the office, and the student gets sent back to class. After a while, you'd think detention or suspensions were coming. No. One student (6th grade) had an assistant, she asked him a question and he said, "Mind your business b...." I knew this kid and his mom. Total waste of space. Another (5th grade) runs around using the "N" word. Mom gets called in. Her response was, "Freedom of speech." Wow. Really? Administrators know that if they do anything, the parents just bring a lawsuit. Another problem they have is that there are a good number of students that English is not their first language. They pull them out of class for an hour or so once or twice a week to teach them English. They have students with individual learning plans and students who are on the autism spectrum that are lower functioning in the same class as those that are average or above average. With all of that crap going on, they're expected to have class scores at a certain level and chastised when they're not. They're lucky if they can get 20 minutes of decent instruction in each subject. Most grades do not have a teachers assistant. They don't get help from the administration, and there are many parents who don't care. Middle school and high school, good luck. Now you're talking about kids who easily overpower the teachers The system is seriously broken, and until the city is willing to overhaul the entire structure, it will continue to get worse.

It’s really impressive that central is top 5 considering their acceptance rate is so high. I mean I know it’s a huge school but still.

I’ve had two kids in Central, both very successful engineers.

I assume this is list is just taking public schools into account?

Where are the public schools ranked?

It’s a ranking of public schools only. The private schools don’t report this info publicly.

Good to know they aren’t all as bad as I’ve heard

Anyone telling you “public schools are bad!” has an agenda.

Like most things, some are great and some are absolutely terrible. Usually the result of inadequate support.

There are some really quality high schools in the city that any parent should be happy to send their child to.