Liberty High School claimed the top spot among Hillsboro School District campuses in the 2026-27 U.S. News & World Report Best High Schools rankings, landing 37th in Oregon out of nearly 18,000 ranked schools nationwide.

The rankings, released Wednesday, Aug. 19, evaluated roughly 27,000 public high schools across the country using 2023-2024 school year data. U.S. News worked with research firm RTI International to score schools on six factors, with college readiness weighted heaviest at 30%.

Here's where each Hillsboro school placed statewide:

None of the four cracked the Portland metro area's top 20, a list topped by International School of Beaverton and Beaverton Academy of Science and Engineering. The latter school, though part of the Beaverton School District, sits physically in Hillsboro.

All four Hillsboro schools share one striking data point: 68% of their students are classified as economically disadvantaged, according to U.S. News school profiles. That figure feeds into the "underserved student performance" category, which accounts for 10% of the overall score.

Liberty posted the highest AP participation rate among the four schools at 42%. Hillsboro High School (Hilhi), which offers the International Baccalaureate program rather than AP, ranked lowest in the district at 124th statewide. Century, the largest campus with 405 seniors, placed second in the district at 45th.

The six ranking factors break down as follows: college readiness (30%), state assessment proficiency (20%), state assessment performance (20%), college curriculum breadth (10%), underserved student performance (10%) and graduation rate (10%).

The metro-area list covers the Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA metropolitan statistical area, meaning Hillsboro schools compete against campuses stretching to Lake Oswego and Vancouver, Wash.