TAMPA (May 20, 2005) – The University of South Florida College of Education is proud of the four local schools named in this year’s “Top 100 High Schools Report” done by Newsweek, released on May 16, 2005. What makes this accomplishment more exciting locally, is the schools’ leadership. The principals of the honored schools are all graduates of USF’s College of Education. The report showcases how much impact our graduates are having locally.

The four area schools honored this year by the list are: Hillsborough High School (#10), St. Petersburg High School (#35), King High School (#36), and Plant High School (#69). The principals of the honored schools each hold a degree from the College of Education at the University of South Florida. William Orr is the principal of Hillsborough High School, Julie Janssen is the guiding hand at St. Petersburg High School where she is principal, Carla Bruning is the principal at King High School, and Eric Bergholm leads Plant High School as their principal.

The USF College of Education has more than 44,000 alumni and 23,500 of those alumni live in the Bay area. Hillsborough school district employs approximately 4,500 USF College of Education graduates, and of that number about 120 are principals. The need for highly qualified teachers in our area is growing and having highly qualified USF prepared teachers is an asset to the Bay area’s growing economy. As Newsweek has pointed out, USF College of Education graduates are definitely making a difference, and we are fortunate to see their impact directly in the Bay area.

The report by Newsweek is done annually using multiple lines of assessment. According to Newsweek, it uses “a ratio, the number of Advanced Placement (AP) and/or International Baccalaureate (IB) tests taken by all students at a school in 2004, divided by the number of graduating seniors” to generate the list. Newsweek does admit that this by no means gives a complete picture of the schools, but it is one of the best ways available to measure student readiness for post-secondary education.