Three local high schools have been ranked among the nation’s best in Newsweek magazine’s annual report “America’s Best High Schools.”

Eastside, Buchholz and Gainesville high schools are all ranked among the top 2% of high schools nationwide in the annual report. Eastside was ranked at 29, Buchholz at 109 and GHS at 532.

The May 18 edition of the national news magazine lists the top 1355 high schools out of more than 27,000 across the nation. The rankings are based on a ratio developed by Newsweek contributing editor and Washington Post reporter Jay Mathews, who divides the number of Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB) or Cambridge exams taken by students at the school by the number of graduating seniors.

“These are all exceptional schools,” said Mathews in his article accompanying the report. “They have all shown remarkable AP and IB strength.”

All three of the local high schools also did well in what is called the ‘Equity and Excellence Percentage’ or “E & E’ portion of the report. ‘E & E’ is the percentage of all graduating seniors who had at least one score of 3 or above on at least one AP test sometime in high school. The average percentage for the top schools in the nation was 15.2%. At Eastside the figure was 78%, at Buchholz it was 45.5% and at GHS the percentage was 20.7%.

“For many years our district has been committed to increasing the number of students taking these challenging courses because we recognize that the experience gives them a better chance of success in college,” said Superintendent Dan Boyd. “We’re proud of the schools that have done such an excellent job of encouraging students to stretch themselves academically.”