Best High Schools in Zip Code 43074

Zip code 43074 — centered on Sunbury in Delaware County, Ohio — is served by a single public high school, Big Walnut High School, which serves grades 9–12 with an enrollment of 1,299 students as part of the Big Walnut Local district.

With only one campus in the area, there are no local peers to rank against, so the meaningful comparison is against the state — and the school stacks up well. It ranked 163rd of 795 Ohio high schools (79th percentile, 4 stars) in 2025-26, up from 262nd and then 234th in the two prior years, moving from roughly the top 30% to the top 20%. Graduation is effectively universal at 98.2%, exactly matching the district. Students outperform the Ohio average in five of six tested End-of-Course subjects by double digits, including English II at a +22.2-point edge. American History (87.3), Biology (85.6), American Government (85.1), and English II (84.9) are all more than 13 points above the state, and Geometry posted the biggest year-over-year gain in the data set, rising 7.9 points from 52.0 to 59.9.

Two areas are worth watching. Algebra I proficiency is 61.5% — essentially the state average of 61.6% and the only subject where the school's edge over Ohio disappeared entirely (from +2.0 points to −0.1). It is also 15.9 points below the district figure of 77.4%; a likely explanation is that Algebra I is often taken in middle school, so those results count toward the district but not the high school. Second, chronic absenteeism is 18.4% versus the district's 12.1% — the only metric where the school trails its own district. On data quality, note that the per-student spending figure ($10,605) is from 2018-19 and is roughly seven years older than everything else; the free/reduced-lunch rate of 18.4% covers one year only; and absenteeism and graduation are single-year snapshots, so their direction of travel is unknown.