In April, U.S. News and World Report released their annual ranking of the United State’s best high schools, and Great Bend High School made the list.  
“We’ve always thought we do a pretty good job of educating our students and we keep striving to do better,” said GBHS Principal Tim Friess.  “It’s nice to get a little recognition.”
Out of 312 high schools in Kansas, Great Bend was among the 32 that made the national rankings.  Two schools received silver badges, and the remainder received bronze badges.
The report listed 500 gold ranked schools, based on highest college readiness.  Silver ranked schools included high-performing schools with lower college readiness.  Bronze schools either do not offer any Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses, or its College Readiness Index was less than the median of 18.17 needed to be ranked silver.
East High School in Wichita was ranked first in the state, and Liberal Senior High was ranked second.  The remaining 30 schools were not individually ranked.
“A three-step process determined the Best High Schools,” according to the report.  “The first two steps ensured that the schools serve all of their students well, using performance on state proficiency tests as the benchmarks. For those schools that made it past the first two steps, a third step assessed the degree to which schools prepare students for college-level work.”
Proficiency in Math and Reading were key factors in ranking.  Great Bend is 88 percent proficient in math, higher than both top ranking Kansas schools and 87 percent proficient in reading, outperforming Liberal High School..
In the category of college readiness, however, Great Bend’s profile indicated data was not available.  College readiness was based on the percentage of seniors that took and passed AP or IB classes.   According to the report, 39 percent of East High School’s seniors were tested and 27 percent passed AP.  Liberal showed 51 percent of seniors testing and 18 percent passing AP.   
Schools may download badges for use on their websites, and for additional fees may use them on other printed materials.