[Submitted by Tom Ito, Fillmore High School Principal]

Last school year, Fillmore High School was recognized as being in the top 11% of the Washington Post’s “America’s Most Challenging High Schools”. Because the data is one year behind we were recognized for the 2016 school year. In the 2017 school year, Fillmore High School catapulted into the top 7% of eligible schools and will be receiving the same national award in 2018.

Longtime Washington Post columnist Jay Matthews explains how they arrive at the national rankings, “We take the total number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Cambridge tests given at a school each year and divide by the number of seniors who graduated in May or June. I call this formula the Challenge Index. With a few exceptions, public schools that achieved a ratio of at least 1.00, meaning they had as many tests in 2016 as they had graduates, were put on the national list.”

The top national ranking is not by chance as the students, teachers, counselors and administrators of Fillmore High School have worked very hard to create a college going culture. An increasing number of students have taken challenging courses each year and have worked diligently at keeping their grades up.

Another indicator of the positive change in academic culture at Fillmore High School is the sudden rise in the number of college eligible graduates. In the past several years Fillmore High School has ranked in the top third of Ventura County high schools in college eligible seniors, otherwise known as UC/CSU a-g eligible students. The future looks bright with the number of college eligible students sure to rise when the data from the classes of 2017 and 2018 are released. Our preliminary college eligibility calculations of those classes indicate that we could rank among the top five schools in the county.