The 2026-2027 US News and World Report public high school rankings have just been published.

These rankings are very significant because they use a comprehensive consistent set of objective factors to measure both absolute performance by students and relative performance compared to other high schools. For example, absent comparisons we do not know that reported improvements by one school in isolation may not keep up with better improvements by comparable or neighboring schools.

The most surprising news for those who have not watched the BHHS conditions in recent years are how far the rankings of BHHS (once one of the very best in the US) have fallen when compared with other Los Angeles area high schools, California high schools and U.S. high schools.

Here are the BHHS rankings:

• Los Angeles Area: #174

• California: #357

• US: #2184

Think about that – there are 173 Los Angeles area public high schools ranked higher than BHHS.

An important but not the sole factor (40% of the total) is how our students perform on state proficiency examinations in English, Math and Science.

The US News rankings are important because they compare the public high schools. Comparative rankings tell us far more than scores standing alone.

And when BHHS is compared with neighboring schools or other schools in similarly affluent sections of the Los Angeles area, the comparison is disappointing.

Thus, BHHS ranks below Culver City High School (#61 in LA; # 129 in CA), Santa Monica High School (#34 in LA; #82 in CA) and even Venice High School (#132 in LA; #177 in CA) which is part of the troubled Los Angeles Unified School District. And BHHS ranks below Palos Verdes Peninsula HS (#12 in LA; # 38 in CA), Mira Costa [Manhattan Beach] HS (#59 in LA; #126 in CA) and Redondo Union HS (#57 in LA; #123 in CA).

This is even more surprising and difficult to understand when we reflect upon the fact that BHUSD receives far more revenue per student than any of these other districts.

A chart prepared by former Mayor Bob Wunderlich showing more detail about the scores and rankings of a number of these schools taken directly from the US News report is in this issue.

U.S. News explains that:

“To determine the top science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) schools, U.S. News looked at its top 2,000 ranked high schools from the national rankings and then evaluated the participation and success of those schools’ AP students on the science and math AP exams. From that group, the top 500 schools were ranked in the Best High Schools for STEM.”

As BHHS is not ranked in the top 2,000 U.S. high schools, unlike all of the others listed in Bob Wunderlich’s charts, it was not eligible for STEM ranking.

Notably, because of the need to compile data from all over the country, the proficiency exam scores are from the 2023-4 school year. There is no reason to believe that more recent scores from all of the schools would materially change the rankings.

Board President Judith Manouchehri discounts the rankings. She said:

“One important point of context is that the U.S. News rankings are, by their nature, lagging indicators. They rely on historical academic data and prior student cohorts rather than current-year performance. To put that lag into perspective, when U.S. News released its 2025–2026 Best High Schools rankings in August 2025, it expressly stated that the rankings used data from the 2022–2023 school year. [As explained above, the current rankings used some test data from the 2023-24 school year, Ms. Manouchehri’s second year on the Board.] Certain measures, such as graduation rates, also necessarily reflect the performance of student cohorts whose high school experience began years earlier.”

Given Ms. Manouchehri’s comment, we can take a quick look at how BH elementary schools compare with neighboring LA Unified elementary schools according to US News. Once again, our schools do not fare well.

Here is how they and neighboring LAUSD schools rank of all CA elementary schools:

• Horace Mann #1044 in CA

• Hawthorne (pre-ElRodeo) #643

LA Unified Elementary Schools in the neighborhood

• Canfield Avenue #600

• Castle Hts. #326

• Fairburn #87

• Overland Avenue #16

• Warner #158

• West Hollywood #486

So it seems Ms. Manouchehri may be correct – the problems in the high school begin in the elementary schools.

Importantly, the US News rankings compare all schools using the same metrics. Cherry-picked alleged improvements comparing one year’s BHHS 11th graders with last year’s BHHS 11th graders really tell us very little. Certainly they do not reveal how the performance of those 11th graders compare, for example, with the performance of SaMoHi’s 11th graders.

And there is a sizable gap between state proficiency exam scores between the two schools.

In English, 62% of BHHS students met the proficiency standards v. 84% at SaMo; in Math, 48% of BHHS students met the standards v. 57% at SaMo; in Science only 35% of BHHS students met the standards v. 58% at SaMo.

The US News rankings are consistent with School Digger, another ranking service, which also prepares comparative rankings.

School Digger reports that BHHS ranked #283 among California Public High Schools in 2023, then dropped to #406 in 2024 and essentially stayed at that disappointing level with a ranking of #402 in 2025.

In Ms. Manouchehri’s case, the excuse of stale data isn’t persuasive because, under her watch, BHHS rankings have dropped each year of her term.

In 2024, BHHS was ranked #157 in LA and #344 in CA; in 2025: #166 in LA and #348 in CA; and, as noted above, in 2026: #174 in LA and #357 in CA.

No one who has watched – even from a distance – Ms. Manouchehri’s behavior and performance during those years on the Board would believe that, after three years, she has recently found a magic wand and turned things around.

I do not presume to have the solution to what ails our schools. It is clear to me that substantial changes, not nibbling around the edges and touting small alleged “improvements” as though they have discovered fire, are needed.

The good news is that we have a lot of great experienced teachers and we can still turn things around.

High Impact tutoring and comprehensive summer school programming are reasonable interventions that the district has recently implemented. The reorientation of high school counseling and the dual language programs are steps in the right direction.

But more is needed.

First and foremost, we need a functioning Board of Education that will set sensible policies, forgo behavior that serves as a litigation magnet, use their abundant resources prudently, cease the mindless micromanagement and get out of the way so that the educators can do their job.