Dayton Business Journal
Best high schools in the Dayton region for 2014
By Don Baker

Education is vital to the Dayton-region's economic recovery, as studies have proven that more people in a local population with college degrees leads to a more robust economy.

To get to that point, though, the region must make sure it is able to churn out high school graduates who are ready to enter college with the skills and knowledge to help them be best positioned for success.

There is an effort to make sure the region's schools are focusing on producing students with skills such as science, technology and math, that will help them succeed. But the bulk of the region's youth are being educated at the traditional public high school. So it's very important that those schools - as the last line of defense, so to speak - are providing the best possible eduction.

For a lot of business leaders who move to a new area, schools are one of the single-most important factors in determining what city in that region they choose for making their new home. The performance of an area's schools also can be a way to forecast what the local available workforce will be like in the future, which could have an impact on where companies choose to locate.

With that in mind, we have put together a ranking of 87 public high schools in the Dayton region. The ranking is based on the performance index scores from the Ohio Department of Education, and also includes other factors that reveal the overall performance of the individual schools - such as SAT and ACT scores, attendance and graduation rates, among others.

Our hope is this will be a useful ranking for a wide range of people and organizations. The more focus that is put on what schools are doing the best, and what areas are ripe for improvement at those not performing as well, the better it will make the region overall.

Ranking of Darke County High Schools:

65 Greenville Senior High School

64 Mississinawa Valley Junior/Senior High School

62 Bradford High School

56 Franklin Monroe High School

55 Tri-Village High School

52 Arcanum High School

36 Ansonia High School

14 Versailles High School

Get the complete list the Dayton Region's best high schools at the Dayton Business Journal