Harmony Magnet Academy is No. 1 again.
The Porterville Unified School District school was again rated as the best public high school in Tulare County by U.S. News & World Report in its 2026-2027 Best High SChool rankings it recently released.
In coordination with North Carolina-based RTI International, a global nonprofit social science research firm, U.S. News and World Report rated about 18,000 public high school in the country.
Harmony received a score of 95.35 out of 100. The school was ranked No. 834 out of about 18,000 schools, again placing it among the top five percent of the nation's public high schools. The No. 1 ranking in the county and top five percent national ranking are also rankings Harmony has maintained for several straight years now.
Harmony was also ranked No. 157 out of the nation's 2,135 public charter schools that were ranked, placing it in the top seven percent of the nation's public charter schools. Harmony was also ranked No. 127 out of about 1,680 public high schools in California that were ranked, placing it in the top eight percent in the state.
Harmony moved up in the national rankings to 834 this year from 871 a year ago. Harmony's overall score also ticked up a bit to 95.35 this year from 95.13 a year ago.
Harmony principal Jeff Brown said the school looks at the ranking this way: 'We believe we're supposed to do what we're doing."
Coming from a successful sports background, Brown also put it in athletic terms. "It's part of the culture and expectations," said Brown, explaining why the school has been able to accomplish what it has. "Our job is to get them ready for the game (of life). Every student is going to have to play.
"We have a great teaching staff and it just keeps getting better." But Brown stressed everyone is involved in the effort from the students to the office staff.
And that goes for the district as well, Brown said, stating everyone at the district is involved in the school's success from the board, to the administration to the Pathways program.
U.S. News use six categories to determine a school's score: College readiness, 30 percent; college curriculum, 10 percent; state assessment proficiency, 20 percent; state assessment performance, 20 percent; graduation rate, 10 percent: and underserved student performance, 10 percent.
The rankings are based in part of how schools educate all students from different social and economic backgrounds. The rankings are also based on schools who have students who demonstrate outstanding outcomes above expectations in math, reading and state science state assessments and earned qualifying scores in a variety of college-level exams.
Sixty-one percent of Harmony's students have taken at least one Advanced Placement test and 43 percent have passed at least one AP exam. The school continues to have a reading proficiency rate of about 90 percent and match and science proficiency rates at about 50 percent.
Harmony also has a 100 percent graduation rate. Seventy-three percent of Harmony's students are considered economically disadvantaged.
Harmony has also won numerous other awards for academic achievement. For several years now Harmony has been recognized as a Distinguished School by Project Lead The Way, a nonprofit organization that serves millions of PreK-12 students and teachers in more than 12,200 schools across the U.S.
Harmony's Performing Arts and Engineering Academies are also ranked as Distinguished Schools by NAF, a national education program that operates and assesses academies across the nation. Harmony was recognized as a California Distinguished School in 2024 as well.
"I'm grateful to be here at Harmony," Brown said. "It's been a true blessing for me. I'm very fortunate."