Five high schools throughout the Rio Grande Valley are listed among the best in the country, according to a national magazine's ranking system.

Newsweek released its annual list of top high schools this week and named the Science Academy of South Texas (Sci Tech) and South Texas High School for Health Professionals (Med High), both in Mercedes, as well as Valley View High School in Pharr and Edinburg and Edinburg North high schools among 1,500 schools in the nation that are performing well.

Med High offers its freshmen pre-Advanced Placement-level courses, and some classes are only offered at the pre-AP level to prepare underclassmen for the college-level coursework their junior and senior years, said Med High's principal, Barbara Heater.

Sci Tech also offers several pre-AP courses to prepare underclassmen for more rigorous work ahead, said Principal Michael Aranda.

The magazine's rankings show the efforts of teachers, staff and administrators to prepare students for higher education are working.

"Our students will succeed at whatever college they attend," Aranda said.

Valley high schools have made the list over the past few years, but this year fewer made the grade. The South Texas school district institutions Sci Tech and Med High have made the top 100 over the past few years. This year, Sci Tech was No. 32 and Med High was No. 70. Last year, Sci Tech ranked 46th and Med High ranked at 44th.

Valley View ranked 348 this year, up from 606 last year. Edinburg ranked 726 and Edinburg North 784. Last year Edinburg and Edinburg North ranked 458 and 948, respectively.

This is the seventh time Edinburg North has made the list, which is an honor since the school has high percentages of students from economically disadvantaged homes and students who have limited English-speaking skills and the school is being compared with magnet schools that get to pick their students, said Principal Ramiro Guerra.

"First of all it is very flattering, but I do read the e-mails and so forth. It really recognizes schools that administer a lot of exams. But the university tells us taking AP classes is good (and) taking the exam is better ... and passing the exam is even better," Guerra said.

Other Valley high schools that made the list in years past, including Brownsville's Porter, Simon Rivera and Lopez high schools and La Feria High School, did not make the cut this year.

Washington Post education writer Jay Matthews created the formula that determined which schools were top performers; he took the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge tests taken by students and divided that number by how many students graduated that year.

Though some of the schools' rankings have dropped, Matthews wrote in Newsweek that all of the schools on the list are among the top 6 percent of schools in the country and that rankings tend to drop because more schools are added, which means there is more competition. The Washington Post Co. owns Newsweek.

Matthews' formula has drawn criticism from educators and think tanks, who all say those criteria don't truly tell how well schools are preparing students for college or the workforce.

Among those detractors is Education Sector, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, which has called Matthews' formula flawed

"A successful high school should show high levels of student achievement, graduate almost all of its students and not let any demographic subgroup suffer at the expense of others," according to Education Sector's 2006 report "Why Newsweek's List of America's 100 Best High Schools Doesn't Make the Grade."

The report goes on to state that many of the schools in Newsweek's list do not meet those minimum standards of student achievement and graduation rates.

But Matthews has defended his method, saying those advanced courses offered at schools prepare students for the rigorous work they will have to do in college, according to Newsweek.

Local high school administrators said they are pleased their schools were chosen to be among the best, but they hold different views on whether the list tells the full story of how well their schools perform.

"What it says to us (is) we are preparing our kids for college," said Heater, the Med High principal. "We know we're doing a good job."

Dan Roma, the principal of Edinburg High School, was pleased to hear his school made the list once again but said rankings like the ones Newsweek and state and federal agencies release do not give a full picture of how well schools perform.

"Everybody uses just a slice of the pie and says the whole pie is good," Roma said. "Just to take a slice, it's not really fair. It's kind of misleading."

But Rolando Ramirez, principal of Valley View High School, said that while the rankings look at only one aspect of a school's success, any recognition a school receives benefits the campus.

"To see that recognition for the students and to have (the school) compared with other schools in the country, I think it says a lot," Ramirez said.

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Jennifer L. Berghom covers education and general assignments for The Monitor. She can be reached at (956) 683-4462.