Research · High schools - Texas · October 2026
Texas high schools with the highest A-F ratings and scores, 2024-25
As of October 2026: The School for the Talented and Gifted in Dallas scored 100 out of 100 on Texas's A-F rating, the highest of the 1,496 rated Texas high schools. Twenty-one more schools scored 99.
The table holds the thirty Texas high schools with the highest overall score. The three domain scores behind it are there too.
Analysis: Test Prep Gurus (High School Reach, highschoolreach.com), October 2026. Figures and the table may be quoted with attribution to Test Prep Gurus.
The findings, in plain English
Early college programs fill half the list. Fifteen of the thirty schools here are early college or collegiate academies, where students take college courses as part of high school. Alief Early College High School, Clear Horizons Early College High School and Brownsville Early College High School all scored 99. Their students sit for the same state tests as everyone else.
Dallas and Houston magnets hold the other half. The top score, 100, belongs to a Dallas magnet. Behind it come the School of Science and Engineering in Dallas and the Judge Barefoot Sanders Law Magnet, both at 99. Three Houston magnets also scored 99: Carnegie Vanguard, Debakey High School for Health Prof and Kinder High School for Performing and Visual Arts.
The gap between 99 and 98 is in one domain. Every school scoring 99 shows 100 on Closing the Gaps, the part of the rating that looks at results for each group of students. The schools at 98 give points back there instead: Colorado River Collegiate Academy and the School of Health Professions both show 98. Gruver High School, the smallest town on this list, scored 100 on that domain and 96 on School Progress.
The thirty highest A-F scores in Texas
The overall 0-100 score, the letter rating, and the three domain scores behind them.
The Texas Education Agency published these ratings for the 2024-25 school year. The score is the overall 0-100 rating that sets the A-F letter, and the three domain scores are Student Achievement, School Progress and Closing the Gaps. 1,496 Texas high schools were rated and 504 earned an A, so this is the top of a long A list, and a school's absence means it is not in the top thirty rather than that it did poorly. Stars Accelerated High School shows an overall score and a Student Achievement score; the state does not publish its other two domain scores.
What the A-F score measures
Texas builds one 0-100 score out of three parts. Student Achievement counts state test results, graduation, and whether students leave ready for college, a career or the military. School Progress counts how much students grew from last year. It also counts how the school did against schools with similar family income. Closing the Gaps checks whether each group of students met its own target.
A school's letter comes from that single score, so an A covers a wide range. 504 Texas high schools earned an A, and the schools in this table are the top of that group by points.
Why so many early college schools
An early college high school is a small public school. It usually sits on or beside a community college campus. Students there earn college credit while they finish high school. Most are open to any student in the district, often by application or lottery rather than by test score.
The rating rewards readiness, and a student who finishes college courses in high school counts as ready. That is a real result, and it is also a reason these schools cluster at the top. A comprehensive high school of 2,500 students is being measured on a wider mix of students than a program of 400.
What a family should do with this
Read the three domain scores, not the letter. A school can carry an A on strong test results while its School Progress number says students are not gaining much. That gap matters more for a student starting ninth grade than the overall score does.
If an early college or magnet school is in your district, find out when it takes applications. Most of them decide in the fall of eighth grade. And if your own school's Closing the Gaps score is the weak one, look at which group of students it names. That is the clearest signal of who the school serves well and who it does not.
Questions parents ask
Which Texas high school has the highest accountability score?
The School for the Talented and Gifted in Dallas scored 100 out of 100 on Texas's A-F rating, the highest of the 1,496 rated Texas high schools.
How many parts make up a Texas A-F score?
Texas builds one 0-100 score out of three parts.
What is an early college high school?
An early college high school is a small public school. It usually sits on or beside a community college campus.
Method & sources: The figures are the Texas Education Agency's 2024-25 accountability ratings for high schools: the overall 0-100 score, the A-F letter it produces, and the Student Achievement, School Progress and Closing the Gaps domain scores. 1,496 high schools were rated; we ranked them by overall score and show the top thirty. Schools that were not rated, including some alternative-education campuses, are not in the file. One school reports a single domain score, which we leave as reported rather than filling in.
- Texas Education Agency accountability ratings, via the state open data portal
- TXschools.gov, the state's school report cards
This brief as data: /research/texas-top-rated-high-schools.json. Free for editorial use with attribution to Test Prep Gurus (High School Reach).
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