Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) was named a “gold medal” school system for the eighth consecutive year by Expansion Management magazine as a measure of the attractiveness of the school system to the business community. Gold Medal school systems this year ranked in the top 17 percent of districts evaluated by the magazine.

MCPS and other gold medal winners are recognized as offering companies considering expansion or relocation among the best educational services nationally, including well-prepared high school graduates and excellent schools for employees to enroll their children.

Montgomery County and Howard County public schools were the only school systems in Maryland to earn the gold medal designation this year. In the Washington metropolitan area, school systems in Fairfax and Fauquier counties also received gold medal ratings.

The gold medal districts nationally constitute the high scorers on a three-part “Education Quotient” that includes the graduate outcome index (graduates’ scores on the Scholastic Assessment Test and graduation rates), the resource index (including per pupil expenditure, student-teacher ratios and teacher salaries), and the community index (socioeconomic factors such as level of education and family income). The graduate outcome index is the most important component of the Education Quotient. MCPS received an overall score of 88 out of a possible 99.

This year’s annual Expansion Management review gathered data from slightly more than 1,500 school districts around the nation, representing communities with populations of at least 15,000 that enrolled at least 4,800 students in kindergarten through Grade 12.