Local Public Schools Make “U.S. News & World Report”- Top 100 Schools in KY

U.S. News & World Report, the global authority in education rankings, considered McKee Elementary and Sand Gap Elementary to be in the Top 100 of the best elementary schools in Kentucky.

The publication ranked McKee Elementary as the 47th Best Elementary school in the entire state of Kentucky.

Sand Gap Elementary was considered to be the 86th Best Elementary School in Kentucky.

The Jackson County High School also made the Top 100 High School ranking and was considered to be the 95th best high school in the state.

Tyner Elementary was ranked as the 155th best Elementary School in KY.

U.S. News' K-12 directory lists 127,538 schools, including 105,193 public schools and 22,345 private schools. Among the 81,046 public schools with elementary and/or middle school grades, 64,915 (80%) were ranked in either the elementary or middle schools ranking. These include 5,411 schools ranked in both.

In total, 46,998 elementary schools and 23,328 middle schools were ranked. When combined with the 17,908 public high schools U.S. News ranked in 2025, U.S. News has assigned 88,234 state ranks across its elementary, middle and high schools rankings.

The rankings use the same methodology for all included grade levels. For each state, schools were assessed on their shares of students who were proficient or above proficient in their mathematics and reading/language arts state assessments. Half of the formula assessed the scores themselves and the other half incorporated the test results in the context of socioeconomic demographics. In other words, the top-ranked schools are all high-achieving and have succeeded at educating all their students.
There is no national ranking – but there are distinct elementary and middle school rankings calculated at the state and district levels, as well as state rankings specific to charter schools.

U.S. News summed each school's standardized scores on the four ranking indicators. From these, a single zero to 100 overall score was computed for each school, representing how well each school ranked within its state on a percentile basis. For example, a school with a score of 55.00 performed in the 55th percentile among all schools in its ranking, meaning 45% of the schools performed better than, and 55% of the schools didn't perform as well as, that school.

Ranks were assigned in descending order of overall scores. Schools below the 25th percentile have their scores concealed and display the entire bottom quartile's ranking range. Those unranked were all public schools that either served special subgroups, had fewer than 20 students enrolled in the federal government dataset, had fewer than 30 test-takers in reading/language arts and math, or for which usable state assessment data could not be obtained. This means all private kindergarten through 12th grade schools in the directory on our website are unranked since they do not have state assessment data.

U.S. News' K-12 directory lists 127,538 schools, including 105,193 public schools and 22,345 private schools. Among the 81,046 public schools with elementary and/or middle school grades, 64,915 (80%) were ranked in either the elementary or middle schools ranking. These include 5,411 schools ranked in both.