Temescal Canyon HS rated top school in district

Temescal Canyon High School was ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the top high school in the Lake Elsinore Unified School District in its annual ranking released this week.

With a 96% graduation rate and a rating of 30.1 for College Readiness, TCHS was ranked ahead of fellow district high schools Lakeside High School and Elsinore High School in the rankings.

Most Canyon Lake high school students attend Temescal Canyon High School.

In the overall rankings, TCHS was ranked No. 671 among California high schools and No. 4,515 in the country. Lakeside High School was put at No. 858 in the state rankings and No. 6,388 in the national rankings. Elsinore High School finished at No. 947 in California and No. 7,332 in the country.

Graduation rates and college readiness are key metrics within the 2022 U.S. News & World Report’s Best High Schools rankings, which was released Tuesday. U.S. News ranked about 18,000 out of nearly 24,000 reviewed public high schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Working with RTI International, a nonprofit research firm, U.S. News assessed schools on the following six factors:

College readiness, based on the proportion of 12th grade students who took and earned a qualifying score on at least one Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exam (30% of ranking).

State assessment proficiency, based on aggregated scores on state assessments that students may be required to pass for graduation (20%).

State assessment performance, based on whether performance on state assessments exceeded expectations given the school‘s proportion of underserved students (20%).

Underserved student performance, based on how Black, Hispanic and low-income students performed on state assessments compared with those who are not underserved in the state (10%).

College curriculum breadth, based on proportions of 12th grade students who took and earned a qualifying score on AP and/or IB exams in multiple content areas (10%).

Graduation rate, based on the proportion of students who entered ninth grade in 2016-2017 and graduated four years later (10%).

This year, U.S. News adjusted its calculations to account for the cancellation of state testing in spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Because assessment data from the 2019-2020 year was not available, U.S. News incorporated mathematics and reading assessment results from the three previous years‘ rankings instead.

And for the first time, assessment data includes most states‘ science assessments. Per federal law, students take a state science assessment once between ninth and 12th grade. U.S. News used science assessment data from the 2018-2019 test year.

For the AP and IB assessment data, U.S. News used scores from 2019-20. It‘s worth noting that most of these tests were moved online in spring 2020.

All of the data is collected from third-party sources. U.S. News receives AP and IB data directly from the College Board and International Baccalaureate, respectively. The state assessment data and graduation rates are from each state, and other data comes from the U.S. Department of Education Common Core of Data.

Using this methodology, schools earned an overall percentile score between zero and 100. Scores below the 25th percentile are listed with a ranking range, rather than a numerical rank. Students at top-ranked schools performed beyond expectations on state tests, graduated at high rates and participated in and earned high-achieving scores on various college-level exams.