Newsweek/The Daily Beast: MCPS has 17 of America's Best High Schools

May 6, 2013

Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) placed 17 high schools on the annual list of America’s Best High Schools, published by Newsweek/The Daily Beast. Two MCPS high schools made the top 100 nationally, and the district has the top six schools in the state of Maryland.

Three years ago, Newsweek and The Daily Beast website began ranking schools, using a formula that determines how successfully schools are preparing students for college. The list only includes the top 2,000 high schools—less than 10 percent of all the high schools in United States.

The 17 MCPS high schools on the America’s Best High Schools list are Poolesville (96), Winston Churchill (97), Walt Whitman (137), Walter Johnson (148), Bethesda-Chevy Chase (178), Thomas S. Wootton (209), Richard Montgomery (914), Sherwood (1140), Quince Orchard (1350), Damascus (1454), Northwest (1541), James Hubert Blake (1663), Montgomery Blair (1672), Col. Zadok Magruder (1752), Paint Branch (1847), Rockville (1850), and Clarksburg (1,986).

“The Newsweek rankings, and other such lists, demonstrate that our high schools are national leaders in preparing students for college and the workplace,” said Superintendent Joshua P. Starr. “While there is still work left to be done, our staff and community should be proud of how well we are serving our students.”

The America’s Best High Schools list determines its rankings using a formula that includes graduation rate (25 percent); college acceptance rate (25 percent); Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), and other college-level tests taken per student (25 percent); average SAT/ACT scores (10 percent); average AP, IB and other college-level test scores (10 percent); and percent of students enrolled in at least one AP, IB or other college-level course (5 percent).

High schools in MCPS also performed extremely well on two other national rankings, which were released in April and use different formulas to create their lists.

MCPS placed four schools in the top 100 of The Washington Post High School Challenge and all of the district’s high schools made the list, which only includes the top 9 percent of high schools in the nation. MCPS had eight of the top 10 schools in Maryland.

Also, MCPS placed eight schools on the U.S. News & World Report 2013 Best High Schools list. Seven MCPS high schools received a gold medal for being among the top 500 schools in the nation, and one MCPS high school received a silver medal. MCPS had the top six schools in the state of the Maryland.

2013 America's Best High Schools report (Newsweek/The Daily Beast)

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