MIAMI – Ten Miami-Dade County senior high schools were found to be among the nation’s best in a study published in this week’s edition of Newsweek magazine.

The magazine cited the schools among the top 1,000 public high schools in the United States based on their work to offer a rigorous curriculum to a large number of students. The ranking is based on the “Challenge Index,” a calculation developed by an education writer at The Washington Post that divides the number of graduating seniors at a school by the number of Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) tests taken by all students at the school in the same year. This year’s ratings were based on 2004 data.

AP and IB courses and the exams that accompany them are among the most rigorous offered in this country and abroad. They are college preparatory, if not college-level, classes, and students who perform well on the final tests can earn college credit for introductory level courses.

A 1999 U.S. Department of Education study found that students’ exposure to this sort of academic rigor in high school was a better predictor of college graduation than grades or test scores.

Coral Reef led the local schools that earned a mention in Newsweek, placing 13th nationally with a Challenge Index of 4.528.  This means that the school’s students took more than four times the number of AP and IB tests in 2004 than the school had graduates last year.

Design and Architecture Senior High also ranked in the top 50 in the United States with a Challenge Index of 3.804. Miami Palmetto (Challenge Index 3.259) and MAST Academy (3.113) placed in the top 100. School for Advanced Studies (2.443), Coral Gables (2.198), Miami Sunset (1.823), Miami Killian (1.56), Southwest Miami (1.087), and Felix Varela (1.079) were among the top 1,000 schools – which placed them in the top four percent of the nation’s high schools.

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