At IDEA McAllen College Prep, a charter school near the Mexican border, 77 percent of students come from low-income families and nearly all are Mexican-American. IDEA McAllen ranks first in the nation on Jay Mathews’ 2022 Challenge Index, he writes in the Washington Post. The index measures the percentage of students taking rigorous courses and exams, rather than test scores. Alejandro Castillo, a student at IDEA McAllen, won first place for microbiology at a University of Te

BASIS charters “captured four of the top five spots on U.S. News‘ annual ranking of America’s best high schools,” writes Kate Stringer on The 74. She looks at how the network does it. The BASIS network, founded nearly 20 years ago by a Czech immigrant named Olga Block, includes 27 public charter, private, and international schools in five states, Washington, D.C., and China, writes Stringer. Taking the lead from nations that score at the top on international exams, BASIS adop

Charters and magnet schools dominate the top of the 2017 U.S. News Best High Schools rankings. BASIS Scottsdale, a charter school in Arizona, is the No. 1 public high school in the U.S. and four other Arizona BASIS schools made the top 10, including BASIS Tucson North, which took second, followed by BASIS Oro Valley at No 3. BASIS Scottsdale, an Arizona charter, is the top public high school in the country, according to U.S. News. The rankings are based on test scores, Advanc