Newsweek just released its list of the best public high schools in the country and Cranford ranked 279 out of the 1,000 schools that made the list.

Elsewhere around Union County's public schools, Elizabeth High School ranked 217, New Providence ranked 224, Summit ranked 251,Governor Livingston High in Berkeley Heights ranked 498, Jonathan Dayton in Springfield ranked 584, Westfield High ranked 352 and Scotch Plains/Fanwood ranked 769.

Scotch Plains/Fanwood also has three magnet schools — Union County Magnet High School (102), Academy for Science and Technology (143), Academy for Allied Health Sciences (167) — on the list.

Biotechnology High School in Freehold was the highest-ranking school in the Garden State, coming in 20th, followed by Bergen County Academies at 21 and McNair Academy in Jersey City, which earned the 48th spot. Millburn, at 83, is the state's highest-rated public high in the state. To see the New Jersey Schools that earned spots on the list, click here.

Schools must agree to participate in the Newsweek survey; if a school's officials don't agree, the school will not be on the list. No data on which schools didn't agree to be part of the survey was reported.

According to the magazine's story, “This year’s ranking highlights the best 1,000 public high schools in the nation—the ones that have proved to be the most effective in turning out college-ready grads."Schools administrators must provide six components for the rankings; the percentages in parentheses indicate the weight the categories carry in the review process: graduation rate (25 percent), college matriculation rate (25 percent), AP/IB/AICE tests taken per student (25 percent), average SAT/ACT scores (10 percent), average AP/IB/AICE scores (10 percent), and AP courses offered per student (5 percent).

To see the full U.S. list, click here.