College Prep in a Small School Environment

Peak to Peak Charter School

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 30, 2007

Contact: Ashley Johnson

Director of Community Relations

303-453-4780

PEAK TO PEAK HIGH SCHOOL 47^TH BEST HIGH SCHOOL IN NATION

(LAFAYETTE) – Peak to Peak High School is a U.S. News and World Report 2008 Gold Medal School, ranking as the 47^th best high school in the nation out of 18,790 public high schools in 40 states. Peak to Peak is only one of two Colorado schools to rank in the top 100, with D’Evelyn Senior High School in Golden ranking 62^nd. This follows Peak to Peak High School’s ranking by 5280 magazine as the best high school in the seven-county Denver metro area.

“This is so exciting—it’s exactly what we set out to do. Our goal was to prepare kids for college, and the years of hard work by the Peak to Peak community are showing excellent results,” said founding Peak to Peak Board President Ronda Kelley.

In a three-step process, U.S. News and World Report used state proficiency standards as the measuring benchmarks. According to the U.S. News and World Report website, the first step determined whether each school’s students were performing better than statistically expected for the average student in the state in reading and math. For schools that made it past the first step, the second step determined whether the school’s least-advantaged students were performing better than average for similar students in the state by comparing each school’s math and reading proficiency rates for disadvantaged students. Schools performing better than the state average became eligible to be judged nationally on the final step: college-readiness performance, using Advanced Placement data as the benchmark for success. The third step measured which school produced the best college-level achievement for the highest percentages of their students by computing a “college readiness index” based on the weighted average of the AP participation rate along with how well the students did on those AP tests. Only schools that had values greater than 20 in their college readiness index scored high enough to meet the criterion for gold medal selection.

The highly accredited college-prep K-12 charter school opened as an elementary school in 2000, and has grown to over 1300 students in grades K-12 in 2007. Peak to Peak High School offers a rigorous liberal arts curriculum including AP classes, highly acclaimed fine arts and state championship athletics. The three graduating classes to date average a 99 percent graduation rate, and the 81 2007 graduates were awarded over $4 million in scholarship money. Ten 2008 seniors qualified as National Merit Semifinalists in a class of 93 seniors, over 10% of the senior class, and eight additional students received Commended recognition. Sixty-two students qualified for AP Scholar distinctions based on the 2007 AP Exams taken last spring.

You can view the article and top 100 rankings on the U.S. News and World Report website at

http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/high-schools/2007/11/29/americas-best-high-schools.html