About Penn

Excellence in Education!

Penn High School is a large public high school located in suburban northern Indiana. As the flagship school of the Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation, Penn serves all the district’s 9-12th grade students as well as hundreds of out-of-district students who have made Penn High School their school of choice.

In September 2023, the IDOE honored Penn with Excellence in College Readiness Award along with a $250,000 grant!

The IDOE’S Graduates Prepared to Succeed Dashboard provides student-focused data to empower Indiana’s educators & families with information on how we are preparing our students for college and career success. Click here to view Penn’s GPS Report Card.

Penn High School logo

Penn’s national reputation for excellence is based on its outstanding academic, athletic and fine arts programs. Penn has been featured on national TV network news for students’ ingenuity and creativity!

In October 2019, Penn students were highlighted on CBS Evening News for their work on a service learning project that resulted in building an oversized Incredible Hulk Halloween wheelchair costume for a 4-year-old boy with cerebral palsy. Click here to watch the story. The interdisciplinary project brought together art/sculpture students with robotics/engineering students; the lessons taught transcended the classroom.

With a 98% graduation rate the Penn High community is focused on  graduating responsible young adults who are college and career ready. Nearly 52% of Class of 2024 students graduated with Academic High Honors!

 

Points of Pride

  • U.S. News & World Report ranks Penn #25 on its list of 2025 “Best High Schools,” out of Indiana’s 395 public high schools, 
  • For the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school years, Penn High School ranked FIRST in the state with the highest number of students earning ICC (Indiana College Core) or AGS (Associate of General Studies) certificates earned! This was just one of the reasons why the IDOE recognized Penn with Excellence in College Readiness Award along with a $250,000 grant!
  • State leader (2021-2022 and 2022-2023) for Ivy Tech dual credit completions:
    • 195 students earn a total of 227 degrees or certificates in the 22-23 academic year
  • Penn was named a 2023 Cognia® School of Distinction. Cognia, a global nonprofit school improvement organization grounded in research-based performance standards, accredits 40,000 public and private schools in 90 countries. Only 96 schools globally were recognized as Schools of Distinction, and Penn High School was among them, and the only high school in Indiana!
  • Penn is an “A” rated school
  • Early College Academy was endorsed in 2019 as an “Early College High School” by The Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning (CELL) at the University of Indianapolis. In 2022, the Academy was endorsed as a Level 2 program WITH DISTINCTION. Penn High School is the first and only Early College High School in Indiana to achieve this level of distinction!
  • The IDOE named the Early College Academy a “UCAN Mentor School”
  • Penn earned the Project Lead the Way Distinguished School distinction for the 2021-2022 school year
  • Penn’s Class of 2024 has 14 National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists AND Finalists!
  • 2024 Graduates earned more than $16 million in scholarships!
  • Since this award began in 1998, Penn has had 37 total Lilly Scholars which accounts for more than any other high school in St. Joseph County!

Quick Facts

  • Click to view Penn’s profile on the IDOE GPS Dashboard
  • Start time: 8:25 a.m. Dismissal: 3:17 p.m.
  • School colors: Black and Gold
  • Mascot/nickname: The Kingsmen
  • Constructed: 1958
  • Extensively renovated: 1996
  • Building size: 581,621 sq. ft.
  • Class structure: Four-Block schedule in every-other-day rotation
  • School year: 180 day traditional calendar (Aug-June)