HHS Principal Tim Fox did a double take when he reviewed the US News and World Report's 2025 rankings of the Best High Schools in the United States.
In a recent school newsletter, Fox told parents that he wasn't surprised, but he was very excited with how much the school has elevated its academic programs and reputation. "It might not seem like much, but four years ago, HHS was ranked in the bottom 50% of the state. Here we are now in the the top 25%." Fox also credited the combined efforts of the entire school community, noting that this honor was something achieved by staff, students, and the Hockinson community.
What determines a high school's ranking?
According to US News & World Report, a "great high school educates all of its students from different social and economic backgrounds, exposing them to challenging coursework on the path to graduation. The highest ranked U.S. public schools in U.S. News & World Report's 2025-2026 are those whose students demonstrated outstanding outcomes above expectations in math, reading and science state assessments, earned qualifying scores on an array of college-level exams, and graduated in high proportions."
To calculate the rankings, U.S. News uses a formula involving weighted scores across six weighted indicators of school quality (weights in parentheses), namely:
College readiness (30%); College Curriculum Breadth (10%); State Assessment Proficiency (20%); State Assessment Performance (20%); Underserved Student Performance (10%); and Graduation Rate (10%).
The magazine then computes a single zero to 100 overall score reflective of a school's performance across these metrics. Hockinson's cumulative score was 71.49, which translates to #85 in the State of Washington and # 5,103 out of the 18,000 American high schools featured in the rankings. There are over 25,000 high schools in the United States.