Six Southern California high schools top U.S. News’s new ranking of the state’s best public schools across over 2,500 that qualified.
Ranked first is Whitney High School in Cerritos, which also ranked 16th nationally and seventh for STEM schools.
Oxford Academy, a dual enrollment and college preparatory school just five miles South in Cypress, ranked second in the state. The dual enrollment school allows students to take college courses alongside their high school courses to earn credits for both.
“Our kids are working with professionals all through high school, in and out of the classroom,” Oxford Academy Principal Amber Houston told The Epoch Times.
The Academy admits the top 25 scorers on its entrance exam from each district boundary area and the top 70 from outside its district. It has an eight period block day—compared to the standard six—and has partnerships with Cypress College, Fullerton College, and Junior Colleges.
“It’s a good balance,” Houston said. “It offers kids alternative ways to take a course and get college credit, while at the same time exposing themselves to what an entry level college course is to best prepare them for that next step after high school.”
- Collage of images from Oxford Academy (Courtesy of Oxford Academy and AHUSD Communications)
Peter Park, a student who graduated from Oxford Academy in 2021, became the youngest to ever pass the California bar exam at 17 years and 11 months in 2023. Last November, his sister Sophia Park, who graduated from Oxford Academy in 2022, broke Peter’s record by passing the exam at 17 years and 8 months.
“[We’re] developing kids to be well rounded students that can apply their skills. They’re applicable and they’re flexible and they can adapt to any situation, because soft skills are hard to teach … and they’re able to take those skills out in the real world and be successful,” Houston said.
Science Academy Stem Magnet in North Hollywood ranked third in California, followed by Harbor Teacher Preparation Academy in Wilmington, California Academy of Mathematics and Science in Carson, and Riverside Stem Academy in Riverside.
Harbor Teacher Prep is an early college high school, which allows students a more extensive college course load than a dual enrollment school. Students take these college courses at the nearby Harbor College.
Principal Desiree Douglas-Montoya told The Epoch Times that the mission of her school is for students to graduate with an Associates degree, which allows many of them to begin their four-year Bachelor’s degree as a Junior.
She added that 80 percent of her students in the class of 2025 graduated with an Associates degree, while 30 percent graduated with two or three.
“Our students … have to want to be here,” Douglas-Montoya said. “All our courses are honors courses or AP courses, along with the college courses. So [students] have to be highly motivated to work.”
Harbor Teacher Prep enrolls its students in a college readiness prep course, AVID, and offers after school tutoring five days a week. Douglas-Montoya said there’s a misconception that it’s easy for their students to balance the college course load alongside the high school.
“It’s not just so easy for them, they have to really learn how to … manage it and balance it. And that’s what our jobs are,” she said. “We work really, really closely with all of our students.”
The preparatory school has a small community with just over 400 students and around 20 faculty members.
“Even though we don’t have a big staff, we really try to have those personal one-on-one conversations with students,” Douglas-Montoya said. “My office is not meant to be an office that you’ve never been in or that you’re scared of.”
Dr. T.J. Owens Gilroy Early College High School ranked seventh as the top Northern California school.
San Jose’s Lynbrook High school ranked tenth as the top school in the San Francisco Bay Area.
