Top Public High Schools in Washington by Graduation Rate
Washington's statewide graduation-rate leaderboard tells a more nuanced story than the SAT or AP rankings do. Where SAT means cluster heavily on the Eastside of King County, the top of this list spreads geographically — from Mill Creek to Tacoma, from Anacortes on the Puget Sound to Toppenish in the Yakima Valley, and from Selah in eastern Washington to Connell in Franklin County. Ten schools clear 97 percent; only one of them — Nikola Tesla STEM High School in Redmond — also leads any of the academic-rigor lists in this batch.
Henry M. Jackson High School in Mill Creek (Everett School District) and Toppenish High School in the lower Yakima Valley tie for first at 98.2 percent, an unlikely pairing that captures how little graduation rate alone tells you about the schools behind the number. Jackson is a 2,166-student suburban comprehensive with PLTW engineering pathways and a 79 percent AP pass rate; Toppenish enrolls roughly 970 students, of whom 89 percent are Hispanic, and was named to the 2016 Newsweek list of top high schools serving low-income students — the highest-ranked Washington school on that list. Dr. Dolores Silas High School in Tacoma (formerly Mount Tahoma, renamed in 2023) and Anacortes High School in the Skagit County port town follow.
The band from rank five through ten compresses tightly: Skyline (Issaquah district, Sammamish Plateau), Tesla STEM, Selah, Cleveland STEM (Seattle), Connell (small North Franklin district), and North Creek (Bothell, Northshore). Selah's appearance is itself a story; the small Yakima County district has a long history of below-state-average graduation rates, and a sustained climb to the high nineties in recent years has been notable enough to draw regional press.
The absence from this list of several familiar names is informative. Mercer Island, Bellevue, Newport, Issaquah, Eastlake, and Redmond all post elite SAT means and elite AP pass rates, but their graduation rates — typically in the mid-90s — are not quite high enough to crack the top ten on this metric, which rewards schools that minimize their non-completing cohort regardless of academic profile.
Statewide, the completion-rate leaderboard is led by selective-magnet publics (Tesla STEM, International School, Interlake) plus the small island-district 9-12s (Mercer Island, Bainbridge). The Eastside comprehensives (Newport, Bellevue, Skyline, Eastlake, Issaquah, Redmond) cluster in the high 90s. Smaller districts with tight attendance areas — Friday Harbor, Lopez Island, Orcas — post very high rates from very small cohorts and appear on the long tail of the list.
Ranked schools
- 001HENRY M. JACKSON HIGH SCHOOLEVERETT SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH98%
- 002TOPPENISH HIGH SCHOOLTOPPENISH SCHOOL DISTRICT · YAKIMA98%
- 003DR. DOLORES SILAS HIGH SCHOOLTACOMA SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE98%
- 004ANACORTES HIGH SCHOOLANACORTES SCHOOL DISTRICT · SKAGIT98%
- 005SKYLINE HIGH SCHOOLISSAQUAH SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING98%
- 006NIKOLA TESLA STEM HIGH SCHOOLLAKE WASHINGTON SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING98%
- 007SELAH HIGH SCHOOLSELAH SCHOOL DISTRICT · YAKIMA98%
- 008CLEVELAND HIGH SCHOOL STEMSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING98%
- 009CONNELL HIGH SCHOOLNORTH FRANKLIN SCHOOL DISTRICT · FRANKLIN97%
- 010NORTH CREEK HIGH SCHOOLNORTHSHORE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING97%
- 011BAINBRIDGE HIGH SCHOOLBAINBRIDGE ISLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT · KITSAP97%
- 012HOCKINSON HIGH SCHOOLHOCKINSON SCHOOL DISTRICT · CLARK97%
- 013W F WEST HIGH SCHOOLCHEHALIS SCHOOL DISTRICT · LEWIS97%
- 014WHITE RIVER HIGH SCHOOLWHITE RIVER SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE97%
- 015TACOMA SCHOOL OF THE ARTSTACOMA SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE97%
- 016EASTLAKE HIGH SCHOOLLAKE WASHINGTON SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING97%
- 017STADIUM HIGH SCHOOLTACOMA SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE97%
- 018TUMWATER HIGH SCHOOLTUMWATER SCHOOL DISTRICT · THURSTON97%
- 019EATONVILLE HIGH SCHOOLEATONVILLE SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE97%
- 020WOODINVILLE HSNORTHSHORE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING97%
- 021CASCADE HIGH SCHOOLEVERETT SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH97%
- 022LAKES HIGH SCHOOLCLOVER PARK SCHOOL DISTRICT · PIERCE96%
- 023WEST VALLEY HIGH SCHOOLWEST VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT (SPOKANE) · SPOKANE96%
- 024LIBERTY SR HIGH SCHOOLISSAQUAH SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING96%
- 025MOUNT SI HIGH SCHOOLSNOQUALMIE VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING96%
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