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WASHINGTON – Once again, an area school has placed highly in U.S. News and World Report’s annual rankings of the best public high schools nationwide, and Maryland ranked as the No. 1 state.
The Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a Fairfax County public school in the Alexandria section of the county, placed third nationwide, behind schools in Dallas and Scottsdale, Arizona. Thomas Jefferson placed fourth last year.
One key to the school’s ranking was the fact that 100 percent of its 12th graders who took Advanced Placement exams passed.
Meanwhile, Maryland ranked No. 1 in the nation for the percentage of schools that earned distinction from U.S. News, education managing editor Anita Narayan tells CBS News. Nearly 30 percent of Maryland’s high schools earned gold or silver medals, she says.
She adds that the study added up a variety of factors, including how well schools serve students who come from economically disadvantaged circumstances compared with other schools in their states.
The goal was to “paint a picture of how well public high schools are serving all of their students, not just their highest-achieving ones,” she says.
Montgomery County, Maryland’s Walt Whitman High School ranked No. 55 on the list, and Winston Churchill High School ranked 69th.
D.C.’s School Without Walls High School was No. 72.
U.S. News & World Report has all of the rankings.