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Benton High School has received a bronze medal in the second annual list of America’s Best High Schools compiled by U.S. News & World Report.

Look no further than St. Joseph’s South Side to find one of the nation’s best high schools, a prominent media group advises.

U.S. News & World Report lists St. Joseph’s Benton High School and Caldwell County’s Penney High School in its America’s Best High Schools feature, which went public this week.

Benton Principal Jeanette Westfall welcomed the national acknowledgment, which took into consideration the test scores of all students, including the least advantaged.

A nearly ecstatic Ms. Westfall credited Benton’s programs that offer increased academic assistance to at-risk students in addition to a recent push to encourage students to take more challenging classes.

“That’s tough for our city where it hasn’t necessarily been our agenda,” Ms. Westfall said.

America’s Best High Schools recognized schools with gold, silver and bronze awards, U.S. News & World Report Editor Brian Kelly wrote in a letter to Benton.

The media group, along with School Evaluation Services, an education research firm, evaluated 21,069 public high schools in 48 states on their “standardized test performance,” “proficiency rates of all students” and “challenging college-ready curriculum.”

St. Joseph’s Benton High School and Penney High School in Hamilton, Mo., were the only Northwest Missouri schools to make the list with their bronze medals.

Thirty-four other schools in Missouri also took the bronze, which recognizes those schools for the first two criteria, but they didn’t score high enough in preparing students for college-level work, Mr. Kelly explained.

No Missouri schools captured gold awards. Five received the silver award, with the closest being Lincoln College Preparatory in Kansas City.

Using the first two criteria, students at bronze schools performed better than statistically expected for average students in their state in math and reading, according to the online results.

Black, Hispanic and low-income students also performed better than average compared to similar students in their state at bronze schools.

“That’s cool,” said Penney High School Principal Tim Schieber after learning of the designation during an interview with the News-Press.

He later attributed the award to a good testing year for the school, which doesn’t offer any advanced placement courses. Mr. Schieber explained that similar academic awards and rankings typically don’t take into account student subgroups, such as the high population of students eligible for the free or reduced-price lunch program at Penney High.

The case is similar at Benton, Ms. Westfall said.

“For not being a very affluent (community), I’m very excited,” Mr. Schieber said. “Getting an award that looked at how all of our students achieved is a great honor for our school.”

Data was taken from the 2006-07 school year.

Alyson E. Raletz can be reached at alysonraletz@npgco.com.