Swampscott High Gains Top 50 Ranking From Annual Review

The September issue of Boston Magazine ranks as the 49th best high school out of 222 high schools in Boston and Boston's suburbs.

This makes for the second year in a row that Swampscott has been included on a Boston Magazine Top 50 education list.

Last year, the Swampscott School District earned the distinction of being ranked 40th among 135 school districts in the region.

This year's ranking trained its sights on high schools, incorporating 13 different data points, the article states. It gave the most weight to academics including performance on the MCAS, the SATs, and AP exams.

The ranking also factored in graduation rates, the percentage of students who go to college, student-teacher ratio and per-pupil spending and extracurricular activities, according to the magazine.  

Swampscott High, with its enrollment of 741 students, its student/teacher ratio of 12.8:1, its per pupil spending of $12,448, had 96.8 percent of its students graduate and 96 percent of its students attend college.

Swampscott High School Principal Layne Millington deflected a congratulations "to the teachers and students at the high school as this is reflection of their dedication and hard work; I've always been proud of and amazed at their accomplishments."

Swampscott's Superintendent of Schools Lynne Celli said she was ecstatic with the ranking just as she was ecstatic with last year's ranking.

In either instance the accomplishment was owing to a team effort, she said.

She said the district is narrowing its focus on data analysis and student needs and expansion so all students can learn.

The superintendent said the high school moved up 10 positions since Boston Magazine's last ranking of high schools in 2010 when Swampscott High was 59th.

The 2012 ranking places Swampscott just below Walpole High and just ahead of Millis High.

The top ranked high school was Weston and the lowest ranked high school was Lawrence.

Nearby schools to make the list were Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School at 19th and Marblehead High at 21st.

The magazine's research for the rankings was done by nine people and the rankings were computed by statistician George Recck, director of the Math Resources Center at Babson College.

"We gathered the most recent available data on area school districts by consulting school officials and websites, as well as the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. With this information, Recck calculated the mean scores for each category, then ranked the districts based on a weighted average of each school data point’s difference from the mean," the magzine states. "Only schools serving cities and towns within the Greater Boston I-495 boundary were included."

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