This past weekend, the Mater Dei girl's basketball team won the state championship, one of several the school has won over the last few years in several sports. Other schools that have done well at the state level in recent years include Reitz, Memorial, Tecumseh and others, but all of these are athletic accomplishments which are great, but when was the last time one one of our schools was recognized for academics? Evansville's Signature School, in downtown Evansville is the seventh best high school in America according to Newsweek which has been ranking the high schools for more than ten years and this has everything to do with academics.

Sig School, as it is known, is setting an Indiana record for the percentage of graduating seniors who pass an advanced placement test with 90-percent of the 61 seniors passing one of these tests. Passing some of these tests can be worth as many as 3 college credits which could save that child's parents anywhere from $500 to $5000 in tuition fees.

Newsweek's methodology for scoring the schools is made up of  six different parts including graduation rate, AP (advanced placement) tests taken per graduate, average SAT / ACT scores and several others. Sig School's total score was 1.929, seventh highest in the nation.

Sig School's graduation rate is 98-percent with an average SAT score of 1766 and 100-percent of the graduates are college bound. These numbers are incredible and most certainly noteworthy, especially when you consider the challenges secondary education is facing these days and charter schools, like Sig School are facing funding problems.

Signature School does not have a football, basketball or baseball team, but it does have one of the finest and most successful high school curriculums in the nation and that is awesome!!

More From WKDQ-FM