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Eight MCPS High Schools Ranked among Newsweek’s Top 500 High Schools

June 21, 2011
Eight high schools in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) were listed among the top 500 in the nation, according to a new measuring system created by Newsweek to rate the success of a high school in “turning out college-ready (and life-ready) students.” The results of the publication’s revamped national rankings were released online on June 20, along with an explanation of the methodology used to rank the schools. Newsweek no longer publishes a national ranking based on Jay Mathew’s High School Challenge Index that appears in The Washington Post.

The national Newsweek results are shown in the chart below:

RANK School CITY STATE STUDENT/ TEACHER RATIO GRAD RATE AP/IB TESTS COLLEGE BOUND (%) AVG SAT NEWS- WEEK SCORE
64 Poolesville Poolesville MD 13.1 99 4.9 87 1828 0.935
91 Winston Churchill Potomac MD 13.5 98 4.4 85 1824 0.791
102 Thomas S. Wootton Rockville MD 13.7 98 4.2 85 1822 0.747
117 Walt Whitman Bethesda  MD 13.4 97 4.1 82 1879 0.692
145 Bethesda-Chevy Chase Bethesda MD 14.4 96 5.3 77 1734 0.603
215 Walter Johnson Bethesda MD 12.4 96 4.6 75 1754 0.494
242 Richard Montgomery Rockville MD 13.0 91 5.4 73 1759 0.459
468 Sherwood Sandy Spring  MD 12.9 95 2.8 79 1616 0.135

Results also were provided by state. Of the 19 schools on the Maryland state list, eight were MCPS high schools, and seven of those MCPS schools were among the top ten in the state.

Each school’s score was determined using six weighted measures: four-year, on-time graduation rate (25%), immediate post-graduation college matriculation rate (25%), AP tests taken per graduate (25%), average SAT/ACT scores (10%), average AP/IB/AICE scores (10%), and AP courses offered (5%). According to Newsweek, officials at more than 10,000 public high schools across the country were contacted and asked to complete a survey requesting specific data from the 2009-2010 academic year. Self-reported data from approximately 1,100 schools were assessed to produce the final list of the top 500 high schools.

More information is available on the
Newsweek web site at http://www.newsweek.com/content/newsweek/feature/2011/americas-best-high-schools.html



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