All three Keys high schools were ranked in the recent Washington Post’s challenge report. Created by journalist Jay Matthews, the paper ranks the schools according to the difficulty of the classes offered divided by the number of graduating students.
In the Florida rankings, Marathon High School was No. 53, Coral Shores was No. 101 and Key West was No. 161. On the national ranking, Marathon was rated No. 242 in the country of the 1,900 schools that were scored.
“To me, this is a very important number,” said Marathon High School principal Hammond Gracy, “because it says were are providing a high level of rigor for our students.”
The rankings are arrived at by taking the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Cambridge classes and dividing it by the number of graduating students. The students’ income level or how they performed on the tests is not considered.
According to Matthews, “I decided not to count passing rates in this way because I found that most high schools kept those rates artificially high by allowing only top students to take the courses. In other instances, they opened the courses to everyone but encouraged only the best students to take the tests.”
In 2012, Marathon High School was ranked 1,227 in the same report.
In September of 2012, Marathon High School was ranked in the top 5 percent of Florida high schools, according to the U.S. News & World Report. Marathon High School was the only school in Monroe County to rank in the top 100.
