Fifteen schools in the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) were named this week to the California Business Education Excellence Honor Roll for academic excellence and reducing achievement gaps among student populations.

The Honor Roll was broken into three parts, the first being “Star Schools,” or those with significant populations of socio-economically disadvantaged students that have shown a significant increase in grade-level proficiency over time. Local schools named to this list were Bryant, Emerson, Lafayette, Longfellow and Madison schools, along with the California Academy of Mathematics and Science.

The second tier of recognition is “Scholar Schools,” or those that are showing significant levels of academic achievement without a significant socio-economically disadvantaged student population. That list includes LBUSD’s Carver, Fremont, Gant, Kettering, Lowell, Naples, Newcomb, Prisk and Twain schools.

For the first time, the business group recognized a subset of the Honor Roll that has both high percentages of low-income students and high levels of math and science achievement. Among these 100 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Honor Roll schools were Longfellow, Madison and CAMS.

The 2011 Honor Roll includes 1,614 public elementary, middle and high schools recognized by the California business community for demonstrating consistent high levels of student academic achievement, improvement in achievement levels over time and reduction in achievement gaps among student populations. For high schools, the Honor Roll recognition also includes measures of college readiness.

In addition, three schools from LBUSD joined the ranks of America’s best high schools by U.S. News and World Report. Among the three is a gold medal winner, the California Academy of Mathematics and Science, and two silver medal winners.

CAMS made a repeat appearance on the list, as did Polytechnic High School. Making the list for the first time was Renaissance High School for the Arts.

The three high schools earned high rankings among 21,776 public high schools throughout the United States:

CAMS

  • State ranking: 18; National ranking: 111; Gold medal 

Renaissance

  • State ranking: 202; National ranking: 1038; Silver medal

Poly

  • State ranking: 278; National ranking: 1,326; Silver medal

CAMS also made the U.S. News list of best high schools for math and science, ranking 76th out of the nation’s top 600 high schools.

To determine the rankings, schools were first analyzed on how well their students performed on state assessments, taking into account the test scores of disadvantaged students. High schools that made it through this analysis were then eligible to be ranked nationally in terms of college readiness. U.S. News determines the degree to which schools prepare students for college-level work by analyzing student success in Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) programs, both of which include college-level courses.

U.S. News awarded more than 4,800 gold, silver, and bronze medals to the top-performing schools.