By Maura McDermottmaura.mcdermott@newsday.commauramcdermottAugust 18, 2026 12:01 am
Long Island is home to 13 of the top 50 schools in the state, according to a new report — but some schools that ranked high on previous lists placed lower this year due to a change in the way the list was compiled
South Side High School in Rockville Centre was the top school on Long Island, ranking 8th best in New York State on the high school rankings released Tuesday by U.S. News & World Report. Other top-performing schools on the list included North Shore Senior High School in Glen Head, Commack High School, Pierson Middle/High School in Sag Harbor, Locust Valley High School and Hauppauge High School. The schools ranked 11th through 15th best respectively in New York
On Long Island, some schools experienced dramatic declines in this year’s rankings. Among them were Jericho High School, which fell from 9th in New York last year to 41st; Great Neck South High School, which dropped from 21st to 43rd in the state; and Manhasset Secondary School, which placed 23rd in the state last year and 55th in 2026
Last year, Long Island had 11 high schools in the top 50 in New York on the U.S. News list
School officials could not be reached before publication because the list was embargoed until Tuesday at 12:01 a.m
Certain schools in New York and three other states fell in the rankings because U.S. News did not receive information about the share of students from those states who took Advanced Placement tests and how they did on the exams, the publication said. The lack of information about AP results caused some schools to fall in the rankings, though other schools were not negatively affected
New York’s Department of Education “declined to authorize College Board to share aggregate, school-level information about AP participation and performance with U.S. News,” a publication spokesperson said in a statement. The College Board gathers information that U.S. News uses in its rankings
“Because college readiness and curriculum breadth — which rely on AP and IB exam data — account for 40% of the overall Best High Schools methodology, the exclusion of this data affects the rankings for schools in New York.”
The other states that did not make AP data available were Colorado, Maine and Vermont, the spokesperson said. In those states, U.S. News used data about International Baccalaureate, or IB, exams instead of AP tests, the spokesperson said
The affected schools’ U.S. News profiles include notices explaining the change, the spokesperson said
The publication evaluated 27,000 public high schools and ranked 18,000 of them based on measures that include student achievement on state-mandated assessments, graduation rates, college readiness, how well they support underserved students and curriculum breadth
The rankings “empower families with the valuable data and transparency they need to help make the best educational choices for them,” LaMont Jones, managing editor for education at U.S. News, said in a statement
In Massachusetts, 47% of public high schools ranked in the top quarter of U.S. high schools, the highest share in the nation. The next-highest rates were in New Jersey, with 44%, and Maryland with 43%
The nation’s top-ranked school was Central Magnet School in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, U.S. News found
Check back for updates on this developing story
By Maura McDermottmaura.mcdermott@newsday.commauramcdermott
Maura McDermott covers education. Since joining Newsday in 2012, she also has worked on the investigations team and covered real estate and the business of health care.
Most Popular
Latest videos
2:59
‘Not knowing how important this program is’1:21
‘This law is difficult to enforce’4:26
‘I don’t advocate for one blanket policy’2:08
‘Students are much more talkative to one another’
