Four area high schools received recognition in the latest ranking of U.S. News and World Report's "Best High Schools," released Tuesday.

Jim Thorpe, Lehighton, Weatherly and Pleasant Valley led the way with bronze medal rankings.The rankings identify the top-performing public high schools at the national and state level and include published data on more than 22,000 schools."We are excited to have a nationally recognized organization such U.S. News and World Report review and analyze our data," said Jim Thorpe High School Principal Thomas Lesisko. "This information impacts how we support our students' growth and success. Achieving our fourth consecutive bronze medal may be attributed to the hard work of our teachers and staff. We are very proud."Overall, the rankings focus on student outcomes with an emphasis on graduation rates and state proficiency tests.Students at the 6,041 schools that receive national recognition from U.S. News graduate at rates that are 15 percent higher, on average, than students at schools nationwide that are not ranked."We are very proud for the recognition from U.S. News and World Report," said Lehighton Principal Craig Reichl. "Our success is a real team effort at Lehighton, to our custodians for the safe and clean facilities, cafe workers for their smiles each day, the secretaries that handle the day to day workings of the school, the caring paraprofessional and wonderful teachers that work directly with students and lastly the students for their hard work and Tribe Pride. We couldn't be prouder."First, U.S. News looked at student performance on state-required tests during the 2014-15 school year. Schools had to perform better than statistically expected on these tests in their state, given their student poverty levels, to make it to the next step. Then, schools were evaluated on whether their least-advantaged students - those of black, Hispanic and low-income backgrounds - performed at or better than the state average.The third step required schools that passed the first two steps to have a graduation rate of at least 75 percent. Those that did made it to the final phase, which determined if their national ranking was a gold, silver or bronze medal. In the final step, U.S. News looked at how well schools prepared students for college based on participation in and performance on Advanced Placement exams.U.S. News made a change in the way it factors Advanced Placement exams as part of the tiebreaker in the methodology to better reflect schools that are preparing their students for college. The measure includes giving more weight to schools where students participate, and pass, a variety of college-level courses and exams.The rankings, featured on

www.usnews.com show data on a number of factors, including enrollment, graduation rates, diversity, participation in free and reduced-price lunch programs, and the results of state assessments and advanced placement courses.Charter and magnet schools dominate the very top of the 2017 U.S. News Best High Schools rankings, released today. But more than 80 percent of the 6,000-plus medal winners are traditional public high schools.U.S. News calculated a college readiness index, which was the number of 12th graders who took and passed at least one advanced placement test, divided by the number of 12th-graders at that school.Weatherly High School led the way with a college readiness score of 17.2, followed by Jim Thorpe at 12.2, Pleasant Valley at 11.4, Lehighton at 9.8, Tamaqua at 8.7, Panther Valley at 8.4, Carbon Career and Technical Institute at 5.1 and Palmerton at 5.0. Data for Northern Lehigh was unavailable.