We are thrilled to announce that Riverstone International School has—once again—made the Washington Post’s prestigious list of “America’s Most Challenging High Schools.”
This year’s ranking places Riverstone at #67, landing the school in the top 1% in the nation and taking top ranking honors in Idaho for both public and private schools. Riverstone was previously ranked #170 in 2019 when the Jay Mathews Challenge Index was last updated.
The 2022 list 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. Instead, 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% 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.
While no ranking truly captures all that a school does, it is certainly an acknowledgment of the excellent delivery of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Programmes here at Riverstone. Riverstone is not only an academically challenging high school—it’s our unique blend of faculty mentorship, emphasis on curiosity, interests, and passions that transforms our academic program into an education that lasts a lifetime.
Join us in celebrating our 4th year of receiving this special recognition!
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