Newsweek Ranks Pope Above Lassiter

is the 20th best public high school in Georgia and 800th best in the nation, according to an annual list produced by Newsweek magazine and The Daily Beast.

The rankings come less than two weeks after U.S. News & World Report used a different methodology to rate Lassiter .

The differences in the approaches to the rankings come through on the border of Northeast Cobb with .

Pope was shut out of the U.S. News rankings, which try to judge high schools’ success at exceeding expectations based on demographics.

Which rankings do you trust more? Tell us in the comments below.

But Pope is 10th in Georgia and 331st in the nation in the Newsweek rankings, which simply measure success at producing college-ready graduates.

Newsweek used six statistics as self-reported by more than 2,300 high schools:

• Graduation rate (25 percent), calculated by dividing the 2011 graduates by the number of ninth-graders in 2007, adjusting for transfers.
• Percentage of graduates accepted to a two- or four-year college in the fall after graduation (25 percent).
• The number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Advanced International Certificate of Education exams taken per student (25 percent).
• Average SAT and/or ACT score (10 percent).
• Average score on AP, IB and AICE exams (10 percent).
• Number of AP, IB and AICE courses offered per student (5 percent).

Newsweek used numbers from the 2010-11 school year; U.S. News used 2009-10 stats.

Five Cobb high schools made Newsweek’s list this year, compared with two on last year’s list of the top 500 public high schools in the nation:

• , third in the state and 109th in the nation, down from 67th in 2011.
• Pope, 10th in the state and 331st in the nation (unranked in 2011).
• , 17th in Georgia and 665th in the nation (489th in 2011).
• Lassiter, 20th in Georgia and 800th in the nation (unranked in 2011).
• , 22nd in the state and 859th in the United States (unranked last year).

Pope has a slight edge on Lassiter in the test scores, and Lassiter has a slightly higher number of advanced exams taken per student. The schools are even on graduation rate at 98 percent.

The big difference between them, and the stat that hurts Lassiter most in the Newsweek rankings, is the percentage of graduates headed for college.

At 80 percent, Lassiter is lower than any other Georgia school in the top 1,000. Walton reported that 99 percent of its grads went on to college, and Pope said 98 percent.

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