Not quite. The #1 school, Dallas TAG, is actually south of downtown, across the river, aka 'the bad part of town'. And is pretty 'diverse' - 30% Hispanic, 17% Black, 11% Asian, 42% White, vs district-wide of 70% Hispanic, 33% Black, and 7% 'Other'.
Their big advantage is that the school is very small (~230 kids), quite competitive to get into, and has very committed students, parents, and teachers (who are far higher paid, and more experienced, than the State avg). And the fact that they don't experience the riots that many DISD schools do, incl a middle scholle 3 mi away just last week. And somehow they get it done with a $ expenditure per student of slightly more than 1/3 what Baltimore spends.
That diversity info answers why they’re now #1 according to this survey. It’s kind of hard to compare a school with 230 kids to ones that have 2 or 4x that number in each grade, and come up with the same achievement levels. But when a school’s population is drawn from a highly tightly drawn but demographically ‘diverse’ area, it will fare very well when a significant weight in scoring is put on achievement of minority students.