It goes without saying that things have changed a lot since our day—and we aren’t just talking about iPads in classrooms. High school in Houston now means Skype sessions with private tutors between classes on everything from sports marketing to building Art Cars, and the changing nature of public schools now means that a non-traditional local magnet school is considered the best in the entire state of Texas. Within these pages, you’ll find the city’s best public and private institutions, ranked, plus a day in the extraordinary life of that No. 1 high school, how HISD is turning around drop-out statistics, and much more.