Walter Payton College Preparatory High School (WTTW News)

Chicago Public Schools once again has five of the top 100 schools in the country, including one in the top five, according to new rankings published Tuesday from U.S. News & World Report.

Walter Payton College Prep checked in at No. 5 in the annual list of top high schools in the country. That’s an improvement of five spots from last year’s rankings.

Payton has consistently ranked as the top school in Illinois in recent years, and has repeatedly placed among the top schools in the country.

Also included among the top 100 schools in the nation were: Northside College Prep (No. 35), Whitney Young Magnet High School (No. 52), Jones College Prep (No. 53) and Lane Tech (No. 60).

“The district’s spot on this report, including Walter Payton College Preparatory High School’s fifth-place ranking, reflects the hard work and dedication of all CPS students, educators, parents and community members,” a CPS spokesperson said in a statement. “These rankings add to CPS’ momentum as a district to watch with our elementary students posting some of the top academic gains in reading and math among large urban school districts as our high school graduation rate, college scholarships and early college credit continues to increase each year.”

The next highest ranked Illinois school was Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, which came in at No. 194.

U.S. News & World Report said it ranked nearly 18,000 public high schools using data from the 2021-22 academic year.

The agency did this by summing each school’s weighted scores across six indicators of school quality — college readiness, state assessment proficiency, state assessment performance, underserved student performance, college curriculum breadth and graduation rate — then computing a single zero to 100 overall score reflective of a school’s performance across these metrics.

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