Weston rises in U.S. News & World Report rankings

Weston High School climbed 10 spots in the 2026 U.S. News & World Report’s annual Massachusetts high school rankings.

The school was ranked 13th in Massachusetts after falling to 23rd place in the 2025 rankings. Nationally, Weston High School is ranked 314th among more than 27,000 public high schools included in the rankings.

The annual rankings, released in August each year by the media company, evaluate public high schools across the nation using a six-part formula examining college readiness, breadth of college curriculum (like Advanced Placement courses), performance on state standardized tests, assessments of performance on state exams versus projected scores, underserved student performance and graduation rates.

Boston Latin School is ranked as the top school in Massachusetts, followed by Belmont High School and the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School in Hadley. The Bromfield School in Harvard and Lexington High School round out the top five.

The top-ranked school in the nation is Central Magnet School in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Superintendent Karen Zaleski said the U.S. News & World Report rankings are often held in high regard, but they don’t tell the entire story. Zaleski and Todd Whitten, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning, noted the agency captures “data differently” and it’s not entirely clear where the data comes from.

“Certainly people look to the data and that’s why they come to Weston,” Zaleski said. “While we look at it, it’s most important … to look at our data and our comparisons with our students against other peers year over year.”

U.S. News & World Report bases its AP course statistics on the 12th-grade class only. According to the agency, 81% of students have enrolled in an AP course, with 70% scoring a three or higher, which is typically the threshold to count the class for college credit. The organization states that it receives AP data from the education nonprofit College Board with an agreement through each state’s education department.

There is also not much daylight in the rankings between Weston at 13 and a top-ranked school like Belmont High School. A larger share of Weston students took AP exams–81% compared to 73% in Belmont. Belmont’s exam pass rate is only a few points higher, with 94% of students passing an AP test.

Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) data show a stronger picture for Weston, although these statistics are schoolwide. The state reports 93.3% of Weston High School students earned a three or higher on AP exams in the 2024-25 school year (the most recent year available).

Whitten added the AP exam data likely doesn’t differentiate between classes offered by the school and classes that students individually sign up for. Weston, he said, does not offer AP microeconomics or macroeconomics, but students can still sign up and take the exam, and they have in the past, with DESE’s 2025 data reporting numerous AP exams taken by a single or a small group of students.

“I don’t know where U.S. News is getting some of that information from,” Whitten said. “I do not think our kids are not passing our AP tests. They are doing very well in the courses we teach.”