Newsweek named Shawnee Mission South on their list of America’s Best High Schools of its 2010. Newsweek stated it based the list on how each school’s staff worked to challenge students with college-level curriculum and advanced-placement exams.
The list was based on three percentages, the ratio of AP, IB, or Cambridge tests taken to the number of graduating seniors, the percent of students eligible for lunch subsidies and the percent who passed AP, IB, or Cambridge exams.
1734 schools were placed on the list, which is only six percent of all U.S. public schools.
Newsweek cautioned that there were many factors that were not able to be taken into account in an objective manner, and it’s list was not rating the quality of high school staff, curriculum, or extracurricular activities. South scored 1705 on the list, and Shawnee Mission East scored 938.
Last year, Shawnee Mission South was unranked, as was East. The top-scoring school in Kansas was the Sumner Academy of Arts & Science, which ranked 231 on the list.

By Hunter Young