Different methodologies are yielding different results on competing lists of the nation's top public high schools.

Four schools in the Triangle made the top 100 of Newsweek magazine’s “America’s Best High Schools 2012” list that was released this week. A total of 11 Triangle schools made the top 1,000 school list.

In contrast, only three schools in the entire state were in the top 1,000 in the U.S. News & World Report list released this month. Broughton High School in Raleigh was the only Triangle school in the top 1,000 on that list at 966.

How much stock should people place on the new list of the nation's best public high schools that was released this week by U.S. News & World Report.

As noted in today's article, the rankings saw some schools that do well on other lists such as Raleigh Charter High, Enloe High and East Chapel Hill High not getting ranked. Less academically heralded schools such as Garner High and Southern Wake Academy were honored on this new list.

The difference from the lists done by Newsweek and The Washington Post seems to be that U.S. News requires schools to do well with their low-income and minority students.

Terry Stoops is downplaying the notion that today's Wake County school board elections, or the district itself, should have national significance.

In his weekly Education Update today, Stoops of the conservative John Locke Foundation, disputes the idea that Wake was the "national model of educational excellence" touted by supporters of the old diversity policy. He points to the small number of Wake schools that have won U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon Schools awards or been ranked among the list of top high schools by Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report.

Stoops, the director of Locke's education studies, agrees that on the issue of whether Wake County residents should be pleased about the quality of the public schools "for the most part, the answer is yes." But he contends the rest of the country feels the same attachment to their local school district.

"So, does the Wake County school board election matter?" Stoops writes. "Yes it does. It matters to those of us who pay Wake County taxes, send our children to Wake County public schools, or have a spouse or relative who works in a Wake County public school. (The Stoops family hit the trifecta, baby.) Does the election matter to residents of Alamance County or, for that matter, Alameda County? I doubt it."

N.C. Central University's law school has some heady company atop a new list of the nation's most popular law schools.

NCCU's law school ranks ninth on this new list, from U.S. News & World Report, that evaluates schools on the percentage of students admitted who choose to enroll. Basically, if lots of students you admit decide to show up, you're popular.

Topping the list? Yale, followed by Brigham Young and Harvard.

NCCU's the only North Carolina law school in the top 10. Its acceptance rate - the percentage of applicants it offers to enroll - is 20 percent, far better than the national average of about 39 percent, said Raymond Pierce, the school's dean.

This is the latest ranking to raise the profile of the law school at this small, historically black institution. It has previously been tabbed the nation's best value by National Jurist Magazine.

The honor illustrates that legal education is headed away from high-price, high-debt schools and towards affordable options whose grads pass the bar at a high rate. Pierce said.

"Affordability is a big piece of this," he sasid. That's where legal education is going."

Some more odds and ends from the recent "Best Colleges" issue of U.S. News & World Report, which came out earlier this week with representation from plenty of area colleges.

High Point University ranked 3rd among comprehensive colleges in the south, up 2 spots from the previous year. High Point has climbed that ladder steadily; four years ago, it occupied the 15 spot.

And Campbell University was ranked among 87 schools in the First Tier Regional Universities (South) category. There are 572 universities in several tiers of that ranking.

NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED.

Local universities fare well, as usual, in the 2011 edition of the U.S. News & World Report's "Best Colleges" issue.

UNC-Chapel Hill can go ahead and print up their "We're number 5" banners, should they so desire. Carolina ranks fifth among public universities for the 10th straight year.

The University of California-Berkeley is once again the top public, followed by more usual suspects - UCLA and Virginia in a tie for second, and Michigan in fourth.

N.C. State placed 52nd on that list, tied with Oklahoma, Oregon, Washington State and South Carolina.

Duke, which ranked 10th among national universities offering doctoral degrees a year ago, crept up one slot into a three-way tie for ninth. It's 9th-place compatriots are Dartmouth and the University of Chicago.

Harvard, Princeton and Yale were the top three institutions on that list. Wake Forest placed 25th and UNC-CH placed 30th.

Elon University did well. It ranked 2nd among southern regional universities and placed well in a series of other rankings as well.

Appalachian State ranked 9th on the southern regional universities list.

N.C. Central University ranks 11th nationally among historically black institutions, one spot higher than another member of the UNC system - N.C. A&T.

And UNC-Wilmington placed fifth among public master's institutions in the south.

NOTE: This is not a comprehensive list of rankings for local universities. I probably missed some. For the full package, check out the U.S. News website.

Several local universities fared well in the latest U.S. News college rankings.

The magazine's annual "Best Graduate Schools" edition is now out. This year, it examines graduate schools of law, medicine, engineering, business, education, library and information science, social sciences, health, public affairs and fine arts. 

Some highlights:

UNC-Chapel Hill
School of Medicine - ranks 2nd overall in primary care and 20th in research.

Kenan-Flagler Business School -  ranks 21st nationally for its MBA program and 10th for accounting and its executive MBA.

College of Arts and Sciences, doctoral programs. chemistry is 13th nationally, and first in the analytical chemistry sub-specialty. The inorganic chemistry program ranks 8th.

Duke
School of medicine remained in a 6th-place tie nationally for research. In medical specialties, Duke ranked in the top 10 nationally in geriatrics, internal medicine, AIDS, women's health, family medicine and pediatrics. It tied for 42nd in primary care.

Duke's law school tied for 11th nationally and its business school is ranked 14. The Pratt School of Engineering climbed 2 spots to 33rd.

Wake Forest

The medical school ranks 33rd for primary care and 44th for research nationally.

N.C. State
Engineering ranked 30th nationally.

EDITOR'S NOTE

 Because a reader has taken me to task for overlooking East Carolina, I give you this - ECU's Brody School of Medicine ranks 28th for primary care.

And yes, UNC-CH's School of Information and Library Science is stellar, as a commenter here points out. A first-place tie.

 This is just a smattering of the magazine's many rankings. The magazine's website has the comprehensive list. Check it out here.

One last note - the image you see above is last year's magazine cover.

Raleigh Charter High and four schools in the Wake County school system have made U.S. News & World Report's 2010 list of best public high schools.

Raleigh Charter came in 24th on the list that was released online at midnight. It's the second year in a row that the school has made the U.S. News top 100 list, earning "gold medal" recognition.

Next comes silver medal schools, including Athens Drive High, Cary High, Green Hope High and Sanderson High.

The folks at UNC Chapel Hill may as well go ahead and start printing up the "We're Number 5!" banners and T-shirts.

For the ninth consecutive year, Carolina has ranked fifth on the U.S. News & World Report list of best public universities. Berkeley topped the list.

This from the magazine's annual "Best Colleges" edition, the one that college leaders swear they don't pay attention to, even though high rankings prompt laudatory press releases and feature prominently in recruitment materials.

Since U.S. News ranks all sorts of stuff, plenty of local colleges here in North Carolina get a piece of the attention.

Carolina was rated number 1 among publics in the "Great Schools, Great Prices," category and did well in other areas, including tying Wake Forest for the 28th spot among national universities, regardless of whether they are public or private. Read about Carolina here.

Duke ranked 10th among national universities on a list where the top spot was a tie between Harvard and Princeton.Duke also placed ninth in the "Great Schools, Great Prices" category and did well in other rankings as well.

N.C. Central University placed 10th overall among historically black colleges and universities, the best showing for an HBCU institution from North Carolina. Elizabeth City State was 11th, Winston-Salem State was 17th and John C. Smith in Charlotte was 20th on that list. 

N.C. State finished in a four-way tie for 39th on the public university list, tied with Auburn, Iowa State and Vermont.

And Campbell University in Buies Creek finished in the top tier of Best Universities in the South with Master's programs.

You can get all the rankings you want and then some at the U.S. News website.

You may recall a blog post in this space a while back lamenting a lack of access to the surveys area chancellors completed for U.S. News & World Report, which each year publishes a popular issue on college rankings.

The short of it: university leaders each year fill out surveys in which they are asked to grade themselves and their peer institutions.

But those surveys, which at UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State should have been public records, could not be found, and U.S. News declined to cough up copies, citing confidentiality.

Well, it turns out that at UNC-CH, Provost Bernadette Gray-Little completed a survey as well earlier this year, and the university was able to locate a copy of it. 

The survey, which a UNC-CH spokeswoman confirmed was completed on April 15, asks administrators to rate the undergraduate programs of universities across the country on a 1-to-5 scale, 1 being "marginal" and 5 being "distinguished."

Gray-Little, who on August 15 becomes the chancellor at the University of Kansas, gave Carolina top marks - a"5" in the survey.

It was the only "5" among universities in North Carolina.

Go ahead, connect those dots.

RIght. That means she gave a lower ranking to Duke University, which routinely rates higher than UNC-CH in rankings of national universities. 

She ranked Duke in the "4", or "strong" category, one notch below Carolina but in the same league as Wake Forest and N.C. State. 

The relevance? These surveys came to light earlier this year when a Clemson University administrator revealed at an academic conference that, in her view, university leaders used these surveys to pump up the image of their own universities while taking a bit of a shot at competitors.

As for the university Gray-Little will soon lead?

She gave Kansas a "3," or "good" rating - the same as its in-state rival, Kansas State.