Taxpayers in the Lower Merion and Lower Moreland Township school districts, particularly those with school-aged children, can rest easy, knowing that the money they’re spending in taxes is worth every penny.

The U.S. News & World Report, in conjunction with North Carolina-based RTI International, a global nonprofit social science research firm, released its 2016 rankings of the best public high schools in America, and Lower Merion and Lower Moreland checked in as the cream of Montgomery County’s crop.

Furthermore, Lower Merion cracked the top 2.5 percent of public high schools in America, while Lower Moreland is in the top 3 percent.

There are 676 public high schools in Pennsylvania. A total of 19,908 of the 28,561 public high schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia met the size criteria to be analyzed.

According to the Report, the top five high schools in Montgomery County, with their state and national rankings in parentheses, are:

1. Lower Merion (5 … 480)
2. Lower Moreland (9 … 533)
3. Wissahickon (16 … 753)
4. Perkiomen Valley (22 … 929)
5. Methacton (23 … 1,023)

The methodology for the rankings is based on these key principles: that a great high school must serve all of its students well, not just those who are college bound, and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes to show it is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators.

A four-step process determined the best. The first three steps used the schools’ performance on the math and reading parts of their state proficiency tests and graduation rates as the benchmarks. For those schools that made it past the first three steps, a fourth step assessed the degree to which schools prepare students for college-level work.

Click here to learn more about where the high schools in Montgomery County ranked according to the U.S. News & World Report.