Riverstone again named one of America’s Most Challenging High Schools

For the third year in a row, Riverstone International School has made the Washington Post’s prestigious list of “America’s Most Challenging High Schools.” This year’s ranking places Riverstone at 137 (and 28th of private schools) landing the school in the top 1% in the nation and taking top ranking honors in Idaho for both public and private schools.

The 2018 list, compiled by Jay Mathews – the Post’s education columnist, is “the only list that does not rely on test scores, which are more a measure of student family income than school quality. It is also the only list that compares private and public schools. It ranks high schools by a simple ratio: the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge tests given at a school each year, divided by the number of seniors who graduated that year. Schools ranked no. 220 or above are in the top 1 percent of America’s 22,000 high schools, no. 440 or above are in the top 2 percent and so on.”

According to the Challenge Index website, jaymathewschallengeindex.com, success on such exams directly correlates with success in college and “the list is designed to recognize schools that challenge average students.” Other rankings that rely on test scores are skewed by the income of students’ families and don’t accurately measure school quality, according to the Challenge Index website.

While no ranking captures what a school does, it is certainly an acknowledgement of the excellent delivery of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Programmes here at Riverstone. Jay Mathews recognizes dedicated teachers finding potential in students – all students. This is something that we have always believed and it is why every student at Riverstone is enrolled in IB classes for their entire time here. Many schools make students apply and test into to the Diploma Programme, but we offer it to all students. Every day.

Although not every student is successful in obtaining the Diploma, every student gets a better education because they are taking these demanding courses in small classes with teachers who are critically focused on each student’s potential. Every student is forced to think critically, write clearly and persuasively, analyze facts, and apply what they are learning.

Riverstone is more than the most academically challenging high school in Idaho: the faculty mentorship, the academic challenge, the emphasis on curiosity, interests, and passions turns our academic rigor into a very special kind of academic vigor that lasts a lifetime – this is our core. This is what is reflected in our ranking, and we should all be very proud of that.