U.S. News and World Report released its 2015 best high school rankings today and two local schools that weren’t ranked last year are back on the list.
Winston Churchill High School in Potomac was listed as the 69th best high school in the country, while Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School came in at No. 161.
Bethesda’s Walt Whitman led Montgomery County high schools in the national rankings at No. 55, followed by Churchill, Thomas S. Wootton in Rockville at No. 101, Poolesville at No. 129, B-CC, and Richard Montgomery in Rockville at No. 191.
The six county public schools were the top six in the state and were the only ones in Maryland to make the top 200 nationally in the rankings.
Last year, both B-CC and Winston Churchill fell out of the rankings because they didn’t make it past the first step of the ranking process, according to Robert Morse, director of data research for U.S. News.
The first step weighs a school’s performance on state tests and accounts for the proportion of minority and low-income students in the high school, Morse said. If the school performs better on the tests compared to the state average based on the school’s proportion of minority and low-income students, then they make the cut.
This year, U.S. News slightly altered its methodology to lower the performance threshold to make it past the first step, according to the magazine. “The change meant that a larger percentage of high schools passed Step 1 in 2015 than in last year’s rankings, and it resulted in hundreds more high schools winning medals,” the magazine explained in this year’s release of the rakings.
Unlike The Washington Post’s high school rankings, which only measure the proportion of students who take AP-level courses, the U.S. News rankings attempt to account for the demographic makeup of schools. The rankings also use student scores on AP and International Baccalaureate tests to rank schools. The methodology means that schools with worse state test scores or lower scores on college-level courses may be ranked higher than schools with better scores because they have a higher proportion of low-income students.
The scores and data are used to create the following ranking indicators:
- The algebra and English proficiency indicators, which are based on state test scores and the proportion of low-income students.
- The College Readiness Index indicator, which takes into account participation in college-level courses as well as student test scores on AP and IB exams.
- The student/teacher ratio.
Walt Whitman, which led the state and the county in the rankings for the second year in a row, had a college readiness index of 87.9 out of a maximum 100, an algebra proficiency of 3.7, an English proficiency of 3.7 and a student/teacher ratio of 17-1. Winston Churchill wasn’t much different, with a readiness index of 85.8, an algebra proficiency of 3.7, an English proficiency of 3.6 and a student/teacher ratio of 18-1. B-CC’s indicators were slightly lower with a readiness index of 72.4, algebra proficiency of 3.5 and English proficiency of 3.5, and a student/teacher ratio of 18-1.
Other Montgomery County public high schools to make the top 500 nationally include Rockville High School, which came in at No. 275, Northwest in Germantown at No. 309, Col. Zadok Magruder in Rockville at No. 466 and Montgomery Blair in Silver Spring at No. 500.
