The city's public schools are hard to find in Newsweek's ranking of the nation's top 1,300 high schools. In fact, no city school cracks the top 200. Just eight local high schools landed on the magazine's list, led by the High School for Arts and Business in Corona at No. 219. Newsweek ranks the schools based on how many Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate exams students take at each school in May, divided by the number of graduating seniors. Schools with unusually high SAT scores - like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science - are excluded from the rankings, however, because the list is meant to credit schools that challenge average-performing students. "What we are measuring is not how good your students are - which is measured by test scores - but how hard each school is trying to raise kids to the next level," said Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews, who devised the ranking formula. A total of 159 schools in the state made the list.

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