BUFFALO, N.Y. — The top three positions in Business First’s high school rankings once seemed to be chiseled in stone. The order was identical each year from 2014 to 2019: City Honors School in first place, Nardin Academy High School second and the Buffalo Academy of the Sacred Heart third.
But that formation has broken apart in 2020. Sacred Heart is now the region’s top-rated high school, and City Honors has slipped to second place. Nardin, meanwhile, has ended its participation in the Regents testing program, dropping it completely from the rankings.
This is the first time that Sacred Heart, a Catholic all-girls school in Amherst, has occupied first place in the high school standings, though it has long been considered among the regional elite. Its best finish in previous years was second place behind Nardin in 2011.
Sacred Heart’s ascension brings an end to the six-year reign of City Honors, a public school for Buffalo’s top-flight students, which last finished as low as second place in 2013.
Here are the top 10 high schools for this year. Each is followed by the district in which it is located:
1. Buffalo Academy of the Sacred Heart (Amherst)
2. City Honors School (Buffalo)
3. Williamsville East High School (Williamsville)
4. St. Joseph's Collegiate Institute (Kenmore-Tonawanda)
5. Mount Mercy Academy (Buffalo)
6. East Aurora High School (East Aurora)
7. St. Mary's High School (Lancaster)
8. Orchard Park High School (Orchard Park)
9. Clarence Senior High School (Clarence)
10. Mount St. Mary Academy (Kenmore-Tonawanda)
Business First studied graduation rates and test scores for 132 high schools across the eight-county region, using four years of data collected by the New York State Education Department. A total of 88 statistics were analyzed for each school.
The full academic rankings of 132 high schools can be found on Buffalo Business First’s website: