Academic Magnet High School continued our proud tradition of academic excellence in the 2024-25 school year. Our faculty delivered world-class instruction and our students delivered world-class academic outcomes. The school’s reputation for academic excellence in Honors and Advanced Placement courses remains firmly intact, and our famously rigorous courses continue to lead our state and region. This year our school was honored with the prestigious National Blue Ribbon Award in recognition of our rigorous program of studies and our consistently superior student outcomes. “The National Blue Ribbon Schools (NBRS) Program is one of the U.S. Department of Education’s longest-running recognition programs. NBRS recognizes outstanding public and non-public elementary, middle, and high schools based on their overall high academic achievement or success in closing the achievement gaps among student groups. Since its inception in 1982, the goals of the program are to shine a spotlight on the best schools in the United States and to share best practices of outstanding schools across the country.”
Academic Magnet High School exemplifies the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate by graduating remarkably career and college-ready students who move into the most prestigious post-secondary learning institutions, the US military service academies, state and regional universities, and directly into the regional workforce. We have enhanced our collaboration with families, created new communication channels between school leadership and the community, and facilitated connectivity by working closely with parent groups and community supporters. We have added additional strategic social, emotional, and academic support and additional college support, where we focused both staff and programming to prepare students to meet the next-step challenges at all grade levels.
Academic rigor and an emphasis on honors and Advanced Placement coursework remain the hallmark of an AMHS education. We maintain our prodigious Advanced Placement course offerings and a culture of academic achievement beginning in 9th grade. This year over 690 AMHS students took over 1850 AP exams, a record number. Again this year, one hundred percent of seniors earned a passing score of 3 or higher on at least one AP exam during their tenure at AMHS. We have near universal achievement of either the SC Palmetto Fellows or the Life Scholarship in our graduating senior class.
Efforts to improve student diversity to better reflect the wider community in our region continued this year with our initiatives to build relationships within our district-wide feeder pattern middle schools. The sunsetting Jack Kent Cooke Foundation grant continued to support the implementation of access strategies for low-income middle school students and families in preparation for admission to AMHS. That grant funding also created numerous opportunities for our existing students, like a tour of college campuses in the southeast over the past 3 years. Those opportunities ultimately resulted in numerous underrepresented students matriculating into the most prestigious regional universities.
Partnership with parent support groups remains one of the keys to student success at AMHS. Partners in Education (PIE), the AMHS Foundation, and the School Improvement Council are all integral to the AMHS mission of educating students. Collaborative efforts within and between these groups created opportunities during the 2024-2025 school year that could not be funded through our standard operational budget. Working closely together, the three groups achieved new levels of college readiness support, the return of a full 9th grade incoming student readiness programming (that is, an amazing freshman orientation program), technology upgrades in support of student outcomes, a monthly lecture series for all students with educational experts, as well as the continued growth of important cultural events at Academic Magnet like the International Dinner.
This year’s extraordinary graduating class of 176 students boasted 170 potential AP Capstone Diploma scholars, 27 National Merit finalists, and over six million dollars in scholarship offers. We also had 132 Palmetto Fellows and 44 Life Scholarship recipients in this year's graduating class.
It is notable that Academic Magnet High School was named the Number 1 public high school in the state of South Carolina by US News and World Report for the fifth year in a row. AMHS also consistently ranks in the top 10 schools nationally.
Thank you to our faculty, our staff, or students, our families, and our community who support the efforts of Academic Magnet High School.
Go Raptors!
Jacob Perlmutter, Principal
Meg Manuel, SIC Chairperson
