SHS Ranked Among America's Most Challenging High Schools

CCEC would like to congratulate our partners at Spartanburg High School on being added to the Washington Post’s authoritative list of America’s Most Challenging High Schools for the fifth year in a row.

The coveted ranking, released in May of 2016, places SH

S among the top ten percent of the United States’ more than 22,000 high schools. The national assessment utilizes what The Post terms its “Challenging Index”; the metric divides the number of Advanced placement, International Baccalaureate,Cambridge, and Advanced Certificate of Education tests taken by the number of graduating seniors in a given year.

Only fifteen other schools across South Carolina made the grade, with SHS (once again) named as only qualifying institution in Spartanburg County. The renewed ranking coupled with SHS’s eighty percent graduation rate and twenty-three different AP course offerings are testaments to the hard work the school’s staff and students have undertaken under the leadership of Principal Jeff Smith.

When we began partnering with SHS over a decade ago, we knew that we were teaming up with the kind of institution capable of challenging the minds and changing the lives of some of the most talented students from across China. Each year we receive fresh-reminders about the numerous ways in which that partnership has continues to bear fruit. We know that Chinese students will continue to find success at SHS and that SHS students will continue to be enriched by contact with Chinese culture and exposure to the people at the heart of the twenty-first century’s most dynamic economy.

We hope that our friendship and cooperation continues for many years to come.

Check out full coverage of SHS’s achievement at the websites of the Herald journal and the Washington Post, respectively.