Best Public High Schools in Tacoma / Pierce County
Pierce County's high-school landscape is more demographically and geographically varied than the Eastside's. The county takes in the dense Tacoma core, the military-adjacent communities around Joint Base Lewis-McChord, the rapidly suburbanizing South Hill and Bonney Lake areas, and the maritime peninsula communities on the far side of the Tacoma Narrows. The leading schools in this ranking come from each of those zones, and the gap between the top-ranked school and the tenth is wider in measured outcomes than it is in any other Puget Sound region.
Curtis Senior High in University Place leads the list, anchoring the upscale residential city west of Tacoma. Curtis offers sixteen Advanced Placement courses, partners with Tacoma Community College and Bates Technical College for dual-credit, and runs a Project Lead The Way engineering pathway. Gig Harbor High in the Peninsula district takes second on the strength of strong AP and SBA ELA scores; Peninsula High, the district's other large comprehensive, follows at third on its five-year completion rate, and Sumner High, the long-established Sumner-Bonney Lake flagship, is fourth. Steilacoom High at rank nine serves the small historic Steilacoom community plus a substantial JBLM-affiliated military student population, which the district counts as a strength.
Lakes High School in Lakewood (Clover Park district) offers a striking outlier in the data: a 96.5 percent graduation rate that is the highest among the county's leading schools, paired with a 15 percent SBA math proficiency that is the lowest. This pattern recurs in several of Pierce County's larger schools — strong on-time graduation paired with weaker proficiency, which often signals a district that has invested heavily in credit recovery and engagement systems. Graham-Kapowsin and Bethel High, both in the Bethel School District (the unincorporated south Pierce district that serves Spanaway, Graham, and the city of Roy), show similar patterns.
Stadium High School in Tacoma, the famous chateau-style 1906 structure that doubled as the boarding school in the film 10 Things I Hate About You, lands at sixth. Stadium's IB program continues to be one of the most established in the South Sound and gives the school a distinctive course palette inside the Tacoma district. Emerald Ridge in Puyallup closes out the top ten.
A note on scope: this ranking covers public high schools whose attendance area falls inside the Tacoma–Pierce County region as defined in the Atlas, ordered by a composite of SAT mean, four-year graduation rate, AP exam pass rate, and SBA proficiency from OSPI's published Report Card. SAT figures come from OSPI's annual SAT-by-school PDF. Polaris (selective-college matriculation) data is shown where available but does not drive ordering. Tribal compact, charter, and option schools are eligible if classified as public; private schools — Charles Wright Academy, Annie Wright Schools, Bellarmine — appear in a separate ranking.
Ranked schools
- 001CURTIS SENIOR HIGHUNIVERSITY PLACE SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE+2.16σ
- 002GIG HARBOR HIGHPENINSULA SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE+1.60σ
- 003PENINSULA HIGH SCHOOLPENINSULA SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE+0.76σ
- 004SUMNER HIGH SCHOOLSUMNER-BONNEY LAKE SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE+0.74σ
- 005GRAHAM KAPOWSIN HIGH SCHOOLBETHEL SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE+0.71σ
- 006STADIUM HIGH SCHOOLTACOMA SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE+0.65σ
- 007FIFE HIGH SCHOOLFIFE SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE+0.56σ
- 008LAKES HIGH SCHOOLCLOVER PARK SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE+0.42σ
- 009STEILACOOM HIGHSTEILACOOM HIST. SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE+0.40σ
- 010EMERALD RIDGE HIGH SCHOOLPUYALLUP SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE+0.21σ
- 011BETHEL HIGH SCHOOLBETHEL SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE+0.18σ
- 012PUYALLUP HIGH SCHOOLPUYALLUP SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE+0.01σ
- 013TACOMA SCHOOL OF THE ARTSTACOMA SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE-0.30σ
- 014CLOVER PARK HIGH SCHOOLCLOVER PARK SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE-0.60σ
- 015SPANAWAY LAKE HIGH SCHOOLBETHEL SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE-0.75σ
- 016AUBURN RIVERSIDE HIGH SCHOOLAUBURN SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING-0.99σ
- 017KENT-MERIDIAN HIGH SCHOOLKENT SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING-1.10σ
- 018FRANKLIN PIERCE HIGH SCHOOLFRANKLIN PIERCE SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE-1.21σ
- 019DECATUR HIGH SCHOOLFEDERAL WAY SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING-1.24σ
- 020MOUNT TAHOMA HIGH SCHOOLTACOMA SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE-1.74σ
- 021FEDERAL WAY HIGH SCHOOLFEDERAL WAY SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING-1.80σ
- 022LINCOLN HIGH SCHOOLTACOMA SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE-1.81σ
- 023MOUNT RAINIER HIGH SCHOOLHIGHLINE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING-2.32σ
- 024THOMAS JEFFERSON HIGH SCHOOLFEDERAL WAY SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING-2.39σ
- 025TODD BEAMER HIGH SCHOOLFEDERAL WAY SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING-2.62σ
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