Two Conejo Valley Unified School District high schools have been named silver medal schools by U.S. News & World Report in its annual America's Best High Schools edition.

Thousand Oaks and Westlake high schools were chosen based on data from their 2006-07 school years.

"We're very, very proud of these two schools, as we are all of our schools," said Jeff Davis, CVUSD's director of secondary education. "This is based on a college readiness index, which has a lot to do with AP (Advanced Placement) course offerings and things of that nature. They offer a lot of programs, and there's really something for everybody."

Davis highlighted the entrepreneur academy at TOHS and Westlake's Information Technology (WIT) program.

Steve Lepire, assistant principal of instruction at Westlake High School, said the honor is a "reflection of the hard work our teachers put in every day and the overall success of the students at the school." He said many private, magnet and charter schools comprise the gold medal award-winning schools.

"At Westlake, the population is diverse, which makes the achievement even more of a success," Lepire said. "We're obviously very excited about the honor."

U.S. News & World Report analyzed more than 21,000 schools in 48 states, giving the top 100 schools gold status. The next 504 schools were named silver schools.

Davis said he was disappointed Newbury Park High School didn't make the list. "We were surprised they weren't in there," Davis said. "They're doing a great job, too. They have their whole IB (International Baccalaureate) program and they had a big test score gain this year."

The methodology used to rank the schools was developed by School Evaluation Services, an education data research firm run by Standard & Poor's, and is based on the key principles that a great high school must serve all its students well and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes to show it's successfully educating its students.

Stephanie Bertholdo contributed to this story.