By John Schwing

WESTPORT — What can $135 million-plus in education spending buy in the estimation of a website that claims it can help “Find the School That Fits You Best?”

According to Niche, a website widely cited by news outlets for annual rankings of “best” schools and places to live across the nation, Westport schools get top grades — something that many would expect for a school district that has such a generous budget for roughly 5,000 students.

By contrast, nearby Bridgeport, with roughly 21,000 students — more than four times the Westport enrollment — had a budget of about $256 million in 2020-21, not even twice Westport’s school total funding (including debt service).

In that context, Niche has just ranked Westport’s Staples High School as the No. 1 public high school in Connecticut. 

Staples earned Niche grades of: A+ for academics, teachers, college prep and clubs and activities; A for health and safety, but a B- for diversity.

Nationally, Staples is pegged by Niche at No. 102 among 19,984 public high schools.

After Staples, the website’s rankings for the state’s top public high schools — most of them from wealthy towns in southwestern Fairfield County — are: New Canaan, Darien, Greenwich, Wilton, Weston, Farmington, Glastonbury, Fairfield Warde and Marine Science Magnet High School of Southeastern Connecticut.

The Westport School District, as a whole, is ranked as second best in Connecticut. Nationally, Niche calls the town’s schools 28th best among 10,772 districts surveyed.

New Canaan public schools are ranked first in the state by Niche, and following Westport, are schools in other wealthy towns: Darien, Greenwich, Glastonbury, Wilton, Farmington, Ridgefield, Weston and the Amity Regional schools.

Bridgeport, only a few miles away from most of the state’s top school districts, gets an overall C- from Niche, garnering its only A in diversity.

The town of Westport itself, unsurprisingly, also gets high marks from Niche, earning an A+ based on its $206,466 median household income and $1.15 million median home value.

Niche says its school rankings “are based on rigorous analysis of key statistics and millions of reviews from students and parents using data from the U.S. Department of Education. Ranking factors include state test scores, college readiness, graduation rates, SAT/ACT scores, teacher quality, public school district ratings and more.” 

More information on its criteria is here.