U.S. News & World Report has another one of those list stories that news magazines like to do.

You know the type. Best places to live, best places to do business, yada, yada. This one is about the best high schools in America, as judged by U.S. News and their experts. And on this list, boys and girls, at number 4, is a school that is in our neighborhood. It’s not one of the foofy high schools in north San Antonio named after a Republican icon, (Reagan, O’Connor), or the richy-rich, preppy types in Dallas, (i.e. Highland Park whose mascot is the Scotties for goodness sakes).

Nope, coming in at as the number 4 best open enrollment high school in the U.S.A. is Hidalgo High School. That’s not all.  At number 6 on this list is The Science Academy/Med High of Mercedes, a regional high school that is geared to preparing students for college. The only other Texas school in the top 10 for open enrollment schools is the above mentioned Scotties of Highland Park, where students drive their Land Rovers and Lexus vehicles to school, if they’re not driven there by the family chauffeur.

Meanwhile, at Hidalgo High School, which is  wedged between McAllen and Reynosa, the school has a 94 percent graduation rate, and every student in the 2005-06 academic year took two Advanced Placement courses. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was sufficiently impressed and provided an $800,000 grant that has allowed the school to work with local colleges in offering up to 60 hours of free college credits on the high school campus.

Overall, among 18,790 high schools nationwide, U.S. News ranks Hidalgo High, with its 95.3 percent college readiness, as the 11th best high school in America. The Rio Grande Valley high school was profiled by the magazine in its most recent issue, with a photo of Hidalgo students cheering at a pep rally.

The national ranking and attention is certainly something worth cheering about. Isn’t it something that a region that is often maligned by the national and state media, (and by some of its own residents), for being too poor, corrupt, or too Hispanic, is  producing two of the nation’s top 10 open enrollment high schools? How does that happen?

First, our Valley youngsters are as bright and capable as any to be found elsewhere in America. They don’t always get the best facilities or nicest buildings, but given high expectations to meet with some quality instruction, they can shine like students anywhere. Second, the improving state of colleges and universities in our region is playing a very helpful role in the rise of a school like Hidalgo High.

The U.S. News story mentions both South Texas College of McAllen and the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg as playing important supporting roles for Hidalgo High in the way of college prep courses and higher education exposure those campuses provide to local students. South Texas College didn’t even exist 15 year ago. Today, the community college has over 15,000 students, a sure sign of the opportunities our local people will seize if they are offered.

In Brownsville, UT-Brownsville is not even 20 years old, and it is only in the last 10 years or so that UT-Pan American has really begun to get first-rate facilities. Here’s the point: Our region was deprived for so long of the sort of higher educational facilities that much of the country takes for granted, and it surely stunted the educational advancement of our young people.

Now, it’s a new generation. And those bright, smiling faces from Hidalgo High that are featured in the latest issue of U.S. News know they have great possibilities and bright futures. That’s what attending at top 10 high school will do for you.

The U.S. News story has the obligatory mentions of the area’s high poverty rate, high percentage of Hispanic residents, blah, blah, blah, but who cares? It has all been said before. Wouldn’t it be something if, for once, a major news organization would do a story about a school district or high school that is underperforming despite enjoying a high tax base and fabulous funding?

For now, we’ll enjoy the success of the Hidalgo Pirates and revel in the possibilities, and positive attention one of our area schools is enjoying.

“Reaching for the dream,” the U.S. News headline says over the story about Hidalgo High, with a subhead that adds, “On the border of Texas and Mexico, an exceptional school,” and I would say, an exceptional people of the American variety.

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