Four Montgomery County high schools were ranked as the top schools in Maryland in the 2014 Best High School rankings released Tuesday by U.S. News. Walt Whitman, Thomas Wootton, Poolesville and Richard Montgomery were ranked 1-4, respectively.
Other Bethesda-area high schools generally regarded as in the same league as these schools were not ranked. Those left off include Bethesda-Chevy Chase, Walter Johnson and Winston Churchill, which weren’t ranked in the top 50 in the state.
The U.S. News rankings analyzed more than 31,200 public high schools in the country. The publication uses factors such as student performance on state tests, effectiveness of educating minority and low-income students, and participation in and performance on college-level tests to rank schools.
Dana Tofig, the spokesperson for Montgomery County Schools, noted he can’t give specific reasons on the rankings because he doesn’t have the calculations U.S. News used. Tofig said in an email that he understands it as “a three step process that looks first at overall achievement, secondly at the performance of African American, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students, and thirdly at participation and performance on college-level exams, like AP and IB. Schools must meet the benchmarks in the first two steps in order to qualify for the third.”
Whitman’s academic indicators include a 17:1 student/teacher ratio, over 95 percent student proficiency on state tests, and a 91 percent participation rate on AP exams. Wootton, Poolesville, Walter Johnson, BCC, and Winston Churchill all had similar statistics to Whitman.
“We are very pleased, overall, with the performance of our high schools on this list,” said Tofig. “However, all rankings have their limitations. They are simply a chance to see how schools compare using a very specific formula and set of data.”
The following are the rankings for the Montgomery County public high schools that were ranked by U.S. News. The first ranking is for Maryland the second is nationally. Other county schools were not ranked.
Walt Whitman 1, 61
Thomas S. Wootton 2, 65
Poolesville 3, 83
Richard Montgomery 4, 163
Quince Orchard 6, 176
Col. Zadok Magruder 10, 319
Montgomery Blair 12, 389
John F. Kennedy 15, 583
Wheaton 16, 589
Gaithersburg 17, 591
Springbrook 28, 1047
