Area Schools Top Newsweek's Best List

 The School for the Talented and Gifted at Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center and the School of Science and Engineering at Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center are back in their '07 slots -- at Nos. 1 and 2, respectively. Rounding out the list: Highland Park (at No. 23), W.T. White (No. 171), Woodrow Wilson (No. 637) and Lake Highland (No. 707).

Two Dallas Independent School District magnet high schools topped Newsweek magazine's list of the 1,500 top high schools in the nation. The School for the Talented and Gifted finished No. 1 and the School of Science and Engineering placed second.

Other area schools who made the top 1,500 were: Irving North Hills (No. 9), Highland Park (No. 23), Fort Worth Paschal (No. 146), W.T. White (No. 171), Garland (No. 173), Colleyville Heritage (179), McKinney (No. 219), Grapevine (No. 222), Plano West (No. 247), Coppell (No. 250), Richardson (No. 455), Plano (No. 457), Richardson Pearce (No. 461), Southlake Carroll (No. 563), McKinney North (No. 623), Woodrow Wilson (No. 637), Carrollton Newman Smith (No. 651), Keller (No. 652), Plano East (No. 653), Carrollton R.L. Turner (No. 699), Lake Highlands (No. 707), L.D. Bell (722), Trinity (No. 774), Carrollton Creekview (No. 831), Allen (No. 882), Flower Mound (No. 885), Richardson Berkner (No. 991), Hebron (No. 1,018), Flower Mound Marcus (No. 1,052), Keller Central (No. 1,191), The Colony (No. 1,235), Arlington Martin (No. 1,291), Garland Naaman Forest (No. 1,365), Frisco Centennial (No. 1,425)

The public schools were ranked according to a ratio devised by Jay Mathews: the number of Advanced Placement, Intl. Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in 2008 divided by the number of graduating seniors. All of the schools on the list have an index of at least 1.000; they are in the top 6 percent of public schools measured this way.