The south of Florida shone once again in the annual U.S. News & World Report ranking of the best high schools in the country: five schools from Miami-Dade County made it into the top 10 positions in Florida, and all of them are also listed among the 100 best in the United States in the 2026-2027 edition.
According to a note from Telemundo 51, the ranking, published on Thursday by the specialized magazine, evaluated educational institutions based on six criteria: college readiness, performance on state assessments, graduation rates, equity in the performance of disadvantaged students, and breadth of the college curriculum, utilizing data from the 2023-2024 school year.
The top state position was awarded to Pine View School in Osprey, in Sarasota County, which achieved the 13th place nationally with a score of 99.93 out of 100.
However, the second position in Florida belongs to a school in Miami-Dade: the Marine Academy of Science and Technology (MAST@FIU), in North Miami, which ranked 31 in the nation. The school is described as "the only public high school in Florida that maintains a collaborative partnership with a public university."
The other four schools in Miami-Dade that completed the state top 10 were the Archimedean Upper Conservatory Charter School (4th in Florida, 39th nationally), the José Martí MAST 6-12 Academy in Hialeah (6th in Florida, 55th nationally), the I Preparatory Academy in Miami (9th in Florida, 86th nationally), and the Terra Environmental Research Institute, also in Miami (10th in Florida, 87th nationally).
A sixth school in the county, the Design and Architecture Senior High School (DASH), ranked 13th in Florida and 96th nationally, bringing the total number of Miami-Dade schools within the top 100 in the country to six.
In total, between Miami-Dade and Broward County, seven schools made it into that elite group of the top 100 educational institutions in the nation.
In the case of Broward, the highest ranked was the Millennium 6-12 Collegiate Academy, located in Tamarac, which came in at 11th in Florida and 93 nationally, being the only representative from that county in the top 100.
The performance of Miami-Dade shows a significant improvement compared to previous editions of the same ranking: in 2023, four schools from the county ranked in the national top 100, led by School for Advanced Studies in third place nationwide. In the current edition, that number increased to six, with five schools among the top 10 in the state.
Magnet and charter schools have been the driving force behind this performance: as noted by Telemundo 51, "in Miami-Dade County, magnet schools and charter schools dominated the top 10," thanks to specialized programs in sciences, technology, arts, and international studies that attract high-performing students through application processes or lotteries.
The U.S. News ranking of best high schools is published annually and is considered one of the most influential in the U.S. education system, with a methodology that primarily weighs college readiness, which accounts for 30% of the total evaluation.
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