To call the Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science a high school, you'd have to suspend an element of reality. You’ll find no football games, pep rallies, or dismissal bells on the Kentucky campus. Instead you’d find couches designed for study halls and white boards scribbled with advanced math. Last week, one student even walked around campus in a t-shirt proclaiming, "Extreme science: What a rush."
Welcome to Gatton. Or as administrators affectionately call it, the crucible—a place with admittedly high pressure, but where every student succeeds. The school has another title, too: America's best public high school, according to Newsweek's 2012 ranking of the top 1,000. On every metric used—test scores, and graduation and college matriculation rates—Gatton sets the nation’s curve.
Read on from The Daily Beast.