A+ rating

2 distinguished Dallas high schools sit at head of the class as Texas' best in 2022

St. Mark’s School of Texas in Dallas leads the list of the state’s best private schools.

Facebook/St. Mark's School of Texas

Two campuses in Dallas have earned extra credit as the best high schools in Texas.

In the latest rankings from education review website Niche, Dallas ISD’s School for the Talented & Gifted tops the list of the state’s best public high schools, and St. Mark’s School of Texas in Dallas leads the list of the state’s best private high schools. Both schools ranked first on their respective Niche lists last year.

“Some of the biggest decisions that parents face have to do with their children’s education,” Luke Skurman, founder and CEO of Niche, says in a news release. “We strive to put as much power in their hands as possible so they can make informed decisions with confidence.”

Other Dallas-Fort Worth public high schools in the state’s top 10 this year are Dallas ISD’s School of Science & Engineering (No. 3) and Carroll ISD’s Carroll High School (No. 7).

Aside from St. Mark’s, three other DFW schools appear in the top 10 for the state’s best private high schools: Greenhill School in Addison (No. 3), The Hockaday School in Dallas (No. 5), and Cistercian Preparatory School in Irving (No. 8).

Meanwhile, DFW school districts dominated Niche’s list of the top 10 school districts in Texas:

Carrollton ISD in Carrollton, No. 3
Lovejoy ISD in Addison, No. 5
Coppell ISD, No. 6
Frisco ISD, No. 7
Grapevine-Colleyville ISD, No 8
Highland Park ISD, No. 9
Prosper ISD, No. 10

Niche says that while traditional rankings rely heavily on metrics like test scores and academic performance, its rankings combine ratings from current students, alumni, and parents with data from the U.S. Department of Education to evaluate teachers, resources, facilities, extracurricular activities and more.

Here’s how other Texas schools and school districts fared in this year’s Niche rankings.

Austin area

Austin ISD’s Liberal Arts & Science Academy, No. 2 among public high schools
Eanes ISD’s Westlake High School, No. 6 among public high schools
Round Rock ISD’s Westwood High IB World School, No. 8 among public high schools
St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Austin, No. 4 among private high schools
Eanes ISD, No. 1 among best school districts

Houston area

Houston ISD’s Carnegie Vanguard High School, No. 4 among public high schools
Houston ISD’s Debakey High School for Health Professions, No. 5 among public high schools
Houston ISD’s Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, No. 9 among public high schools
Katy ISD’s Seven Lakes High School, No. 10 among public high schools
The John Cooper School in The Woodlands, No. 6 among private high schools
The Village School in Houston, No. 7 among private high schools
The Kincaid School in Houston, No. 10 among private high schools

San Antonio area

Keystone School in San Antonio, No. 9 among private high schools
BASIS Texas Charter Schools in San Antonio, No. 4 among school districts

Rio Grande Valley

South Texas ISD in Mercedes, No. 2 among school districts

lists rankings education

Stretching the budget

A $100,000 salary in 2026 goes further in Dallas than it did last year

joe daniel price/Getty Images

undefined

A 2026 income study has good news for big earners in Dallas: A six-figure salary goes further than it did last year.

A Dallasite's $100,000 salary is worth $80,103 after taxes and adjusted for the local cost of living, according to the new financial analysis from SmartAsset. That's nearly 4 percent higher than last year, when the same salary had an adjusted value of $77,197.

Six-figure earners in Plano also got a slight — 2 percent — value boost to their salaries this year, the report revealed. A $100,000 salary in Plano is worth $72,653, compared to $71,372 last year.

SmartAsset used its paycheck calculator to apply federal, state and local taxes to an annual salary of $100,000 in 69 of the largest American cities. The figure was then adjusted for the local cost of living (which included average costs for housing, groceries, utilities, transportation, and miscellaneous goods and services). Cities were then ranked based on where a six-figure salary is worth the least after applicable taxes and cost of living adjustments.

Plano ranked 27th and Dallas ranked 47th in the overall ranking of U.S. cities where $100,000 is worth the least.

If the rankings were flipped and the cities were ranked based on where $100,000 goes the furthest, that places Dallas in the No. 22 spot and Plano as No. 43 nationally.

Manhattan, New York remains the No. 1 city where a six-figure salary is worth the least. A Manhattan resident's take-home pay is only worth $29,420 after taxes and adjusted for the cost of living, which is 3.10 percent lower than it was in 2025.

SmartAsset determined Manhattan has a 29.7 percent effective tax rate on six-figure salaries. Meanwhile, the effective tax rate on a $100,000 salary in Texas (based on the eight cities examined in the report) is 21.1 percent. It's worth highlighting that New York implements a statewide graduated-rate income tax from 4-10.90 percent, whereas Texas is one of only eight states that don't tax residents' income.

Oklahoma City, No. 69, is the U.S. city in the report where a $100,000 salary stretches the furthest. A six-figure salary is worth $91,868 in 2026, up from $89,989 last year.

This is the post-tax value of a $100,000 salary in other Texas cities, and their ranking in the report:

Austin (No. 53): $82,446
Lubbock (No. 59): $84,567
Houston (No. 60): $84,840
San Antonio (No. 62): $86,419
El Paso (No. 67): $90,276
Corpus Christi (No. 68): $91,110

According to the report, getting some "financial breathing room" by making six-figures really depends on where someone lives and what their lifestyle is. For residents living in the 42 states that levy some amount of income tax, their take-home pay dwindles further.

"And depending on how taxes are filed, reaching a $100,000 income may push a household from the 22 percent to 24 percent marginal tax bracket," the report's author wrote. "Meanwhile, locations with high costs across housing and everyday essentials may be less forgiving to a $100,000 income."

smartasset income finance six figures