CANTON — Five area schools, including three in St. Lawrence County, have received Silver Medal designation in U.S. News and World Report’s 2017 high school rankings.
That means Canton’s Hugh C. Williams Senior High School, Lowville High School, Potsdam High School, Sackets Harbor Central School and Norwood-Norfolk Central School were included in the top 200 schools in New York.
Canton ranked 112th, Lowville ranked 127th, Potsdam ranked 141st, Sackets Harbor ranked 173rd and Norwood-Norfolk ranked 198th out of more than 700 schools in the state.
Gold Medal designation is awarded to the top 500 schools based on highest college readiness This year, 2.4 percent of the state’s schools were recognized.
Silver Medal designation goes to high-performing schools based on lower college readiness. This year, 10.3 percent of the state’s schools — including the five north country schools — were recognized.
Bronze Medal designation is awarded to high-performing schools based on state exam performance. That’s 16.8 percent of the state’s schools this year.
No medal is awarded to 70.5 percent of the schools in the state.
Officials with U.S. News and World Report say the first step in deciding who to recognize is to look at reading and math results for students on each state’s proficiency test and then factor in the percentage of economically disadvantaged students, who they say tend to score lower.
The second step is to compare each school’s math and reading proficiency rates for disadvantaged students — black, Hispanic and low-income — with the statewide results for those student groups and then select schools that were performing better than their state average.
Following that, the scorers look to see if the student graduation rates meet or exceed the national standard, and then calculate a College Readiness Index, which is based on the school’s Advanced Placement rates and how well students did on those tests.
Norwood-Norfolk Central School Superintendent James Cruikshank said the school was proud to be included as a Silver Medal designee.
“We were very pleased with that. We’re proud of the growth and accomplishments of our school. We’ve had some steady improvements in a lot of our test scores,” he said.
Mr. Cruikshank said credit for performance was due to a team effort by everyone at the school and in the community.
“I think it does speak volumes to the level of work that our administration, teachers, students, families and community have put into improvement. This affirms the power of working together: school, family, community,” he said.
“When we analyze our data, we do a comparative analysis with the rest of the north country, but we also do it with New York state,” Mr. Cruikshank said. “We’re not happy being a good school in the north country. We want to be one of the best in New York state,”
He said Norwood-Norfolk continues to move forward with increasing student achievement in the district.
“We can’t rest. We always have to be moving forward. I can’t say that every year we’ll rank as high, but our goal is to provide the best program that we can,” he said.