By BOB TUROSZ

NORTH READING – The first day of school has come and gone, and North Reading High School has a spiffy rating from Boston Magazine to go with its new building. NRHS was ranked 45th best public high school in Greater Boston by Boston Magazine in its September issue, based on data weighing the school’s SAT, MCAS and Advanced Placement (AP) scores. The magazine set out to rank the top 50 schools in Greater Boston based on test scores, student-to-teacher ratios and graduation rates to produce the magazine’s proprietary rankings of both private and public high schools. Two years ago, in 2012, Boston Magazine ranked NRHS 32nd in the survey.  With 723 students, North Reading High School is one of the smaller schools ranked in the survey.   According to the magazine, average class size is 20.4 and the student to teacher ratio is 12.3:1. The per-pupil spending is $12,498,  according to the magazine and 98 percent were either Advanced or Proficient in the English MCAS exam. Additionally, 91 percent of students were ranked Advanced or Proficient in the MCAS math exam and 91 percent were Advanced or Proficient in the MCAS Science exam. According to the rankings, the high school’s average SAT reading score was 547. The average SAT writing score was 546 and the average SAT math score was 577. The magazine was also able to determine the high school spent $7.48 “per SAT point.” Of the number of students taking Advance Placement (AP) classes, 56.2 percent earned passing scores of 3, 4 or 5 on the exams, the magazine said. NRHS has three college counselors and has a graduation rate of 92.4 percent, with 87.3 percent going on to college. Boston Magazine ranked Dover-Sherborn as the best high school in Greater Boston. Lexington High School was second. Acton-Boxborough Regional High School was third. The Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School in Marlborough was fourth and Newton South High School was fifth. More locally, Lynnfield High School was rated 36th in the rankings. Winchester was judged 11th; Andover High School was 22. Georgetown High School was 25th. Masconomet Regional High School was 28th. Reading Memorial High School was 30th. Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School was 31st. Marblehead High School was 37th.  Newburyport High School was 40th. Methodology Boston Magazine said it compiled the rankings by gathering the most recent available date on public schools from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). Private Schools included in the list provided their own data to the publication. According to the magazine’s methodology, Boston Magazine also used town and school websites if deemed necessary. Georg Recck, a statistician and the director of the Math Resource Center at Babson College, calculated the mean scores for each category. He then ranked the schools based on a weighted average of each school data point’s difference from the mean, using mean values when data was unavailable. Only public schools within the Greater Boston Route 495 belt were included in the publication’s rankings.