The U.S. News and World Report rankings for high schools have been released and one local school earned a top 10 ranking within the state.

This year, U.S. News & World Report looked at data on nearly 24,000 public high schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia before ranking nearly 18,000 schools based on six factors. 

The six factors, and the percentage of how much those factors weigh into the rankings, includes college readiness (30%), state assessment proficiency (20%), state assessment performance (20%), underserved student performance (10%), college curriculum breadth (10%) and graduation rate (10%). 

Some changes occurred for this year’s rankings:

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.

The top five schools statewide were Greely, Kennebunk, Maine School of Science and Mathematics, Cape Elizabeth and Falmouth. 

Camden Hills ranked sixth in the state, up from being ranked ninth in 2021 and back to where it was ranked in 2020.

Belfast plummeted from sixth in the state last year to 32nd in this year’s rankings.  

Oceanside fell slightly from 36th last year to 41st this year. Both are down dramatically from when it ranked 10th in 2020. 

Medomak Valley High School ranked between 55th place and 113th place, which is roughly in line from last year’s ranking of 47th to 79th.

Mount View and Searsport also ranked between 55th place and 113th place, and neither had been ranked last year.