- Report: Beehive Science and Technology Academy ranked Utah's top high school.
- Several local charter schools with focused academic missions ranked high in annual report.
- Students at Beehive Science and Technology Academy are learning fundamental STEM skills — and durable skills.
Beehive Science and Technology Academy, or BSTA, may not have a football or basketball team — but it’s still sitting atop Utah’s high school “rankings.”
Once again, U.S. News & World Report has ranked the Sandy charter school as the Beehive State’s best high school — a lofty spot it’s claimed five years running.
BSTA Director Hanifi Oguz told the Deseret News he’s “extremely happy” about the premier ranking — adding the continued recognition reflects the BSTA’s community’s commitment to its mission to educate and empower students.
“Beehive Academy is a pretty diverse community, and students from many backgrounds come to our school,” said Oguz. “But our mission, vision, and focus really makes a big difference here to prepare kids to be successful.”
BSTA is one of six charter schools that cracked the annual report’s Utah top 10 list.
Lindon’s Karl G. Maeser Preparatory Academy came in at No. 2; InTech Collegiate High School in North Logan, No. 4; West Jordan’s Itineris Early College High School, No. 6; Murray’s Academy for Math Engineering and Science (AMES), No. 8; and Layton’s Northern Utah Academy for Math Engineering and Science, No. 9.
Skyline High School in Millcreek is the U.S. News & World Report’s top-ranked traditional Utah public school at No. 3.
Other traditional Utah public high schools in the top 10 include Park City High School, No. 5; Draper’s Corner Canyon High School, No. 7; and Olympus High School, No. 10.
Skyline and Olympus belong to the Granite School District. Park City High and Corner Canyon High are in the Park City and the Canyons school districts, respectively.
What’s the high school ranking methodology?
To determine its rankings across the nation, U.S. News & World Report utilized six weighted measures that reflect how well high schools serve all students — not just those who are planning to attend college.
1. College readiness (30% of the ranking)
This measure considers the percentage of 12th graders taking — and passing — AP and IB exams.
2. College curriculum breadth (10%)
This percentage factors in 12th graders who took a wide variety of AP and IB courses across multiple disciplines.
3. State assessment proficiency (20%)
This measure factors in how well students at each school scored on state assessments measuring proficiency in reading, science and math.
4. State assessment performance (20%)
This is the difference, according to the report, between how students performed on state assessments and what U.S. News predicted based on a school’s student body.
U.S. News’ modeling across all 50 states and the District of Columbia indicates that the performance percentage of students from “historically underserved subgroups” — defined as Black students, Hispanic students, and students who are eligible for free and reduced price lunch — are highly predictive of a school’s reading, science and math scores.
5. Underserved student performance (10%)
This is how well the student population receiving subsidized school lunch and Black and Hispanic populations perform on state assessments relative to statewide performance among students not in those subgroups.
6. Graduation rate (10%)
BSTA: Prioritizing STEM and education’s ‘soft skills’
Founded in 2005, BSTA is an open-enrollment, tuition-free charter school serving students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
The school, according to BSTA’s website, was started by a group of scholars that observed a need for a school that emphasized science, technology and math — while also providing foundations in humanities and social science.
According to the rankings report, 44% of BSTA’s students, grades 9-12, are minorities — and 23% are “economically disadvantaged.”
BSTA’s ranking scorecard indicated 100% of students measured in the survey took at least one AP exam.
And while the school is committed to being a “high-achieving, high-expectation” institution, it also provides broad support for students who may be struggling and need a bit of extra help, said Oguz.
“We do our best to make sure every student is learning — and, overall, it pays off,” he added. “We want to make sure that everyone is growing.”
While traditional STEM courses are fundamental at BSTA, STEM-related lessons and technology are also applied in the school’s humanities courses such as language arts and music.
Meanwhile, so-called soft skills such as problem-solving and team-building are prioritized across the curriculum.
It all adds up to forming well-equipped students for whatever career or education path awaits, said Oguz.
“We offer lots of clubs, enrichment programs and extracurricular activities,” he said. “For example, there are seven competitive robotics teams in the school.”
Much of BSTA’s success, added Oguz, comes from its “village” of parents and community supporters hailing from a range of backgrounds.
“Everyone plays a big role,” he said. “That’s why we want to have strong bridges with the families — and to do that, we have lots of activities in the schools that we invite parents to come and be a part of.”
Tapping into charter schools’ ‘superpowers’
Utah State Charter School Board communications director Lincoln Fillmore said he’s not surprised to see BSTA and several other Utah public charter schools earning high ranks in this year’s U.S. News and World Report.
“It doesn’t just happen,” said Fillmore. “Excellence in education is the result of dedication and hard work over a period of time.
“And so I think you see that at those schools — that’s the unique thing that puts them all together. They are dedicated to academic excellence. It permeates everything that they do at those schools.”
Besides his school board role, Fillmore is also a state senator who serves on several education committees.
Fillmore agreed that the several of the charter high schools included in Utah’s top 10 list have something of a defined academic identity, adding that’s one of the “superpowers” of charter schools.
“There is something special in allowing you to focus on specific areas that draw people whose individual goals match the goals that the school is putting forward,” he said.
Utah’s charter schools, added Fillmore, are held to the same academic, curriculum and instructional standards required of all public schools.
“But I do think that because they’re not called on to be everything to everybody, charter schools — with the ability to focus on a specific area — really do help in matching students with programs that meet their desired interests and outcomes.”
The student diversity found at, say, BSTA is generally reflective of charter school demographics across the state. The demographics of Utah charter schools, said Fillmore, often match the profiles of other nearby schools. And they tend to draw students who are within reasonable distance.
“And so it’s not really that charter schools are drawing specific kinds of students — but rather, the students that are interested in going to the school and they share the commitment to become excellent at what they’re focusing on,” he said.
No surprise, not all of Utah’s charter schools are close to cracking the U.S. News & World Report top 10 rankings. Some, like several traditional public high schools, are near the bottom.
Fillmore said it’s expected that some charter schools would not claim high marks on the recent report because their unique educational roles and missions might not be well reflected by the report’s criteria and measures.