Bethesda High Schools Get Top Rankings

Montgomery County Public Schools have done it again—landing in top spots in a national ranking.

This time, the ranking is the third annual list of America's Best High Schools, published by Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

Walt Whitman High School, Walter Johnson High School and Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School came out as the third-, fourth- and fifth-best schools, respectively, in the county.

Seventeen of the county's public high schools made it on this list, which includes the nation's top 2,000 high schools—less than 10 percent of all the high schools in the country. And, the top six high schools in Maryland are all MCPS schools, according to a school system statement.

The 17 county schools (with their national rankings in parentheses) on the list are:

• Poolesville (No. 96)
• Winston Churchill (No. 97)
• Walt Whitman (No. 137)
• Walter Johnson (No. 148)
• Bethesda-Chevy Chase (No. 178)
• Thomas S. Wootton (No. 209)
• Richard Montgomery (No. 914)
• Sherwood (No. 1,140)
• Quince Orchard (No. 1,350)
• Damascus (No. 1,454)
• Northwest (No. 1,541)
• James Hubert Blake (No. 1,663)
• Montgomery Blair (No. 1,672)
• Col. Zadok Magruder (No. 1,752)
• Paint Branch (No. 1,847)
• Rockville (No. 1,850)
• Clarksburg (No. 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," Superintendent Joshua P. Starr said. "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 is created 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)
• Percent of students enrolled in at least one AP, IB or other college-level course (5 percent), according to a county school system statement.

Last month, eight of the system's public high schools placed in U.S. News & World Report's 2013 Best High Schools list, with seven of them—including Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and Walt Whitman High School—receiving gold medals for being among the top 500 schools in the nation, Patch reported.

And, earlier this spring, four county high schools, including Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, ranked in the top 100 schools of The Washington Post's 2013 High School Challenge—an annual ranking of the nation's high schools, Patch reported.