Nine Montgomery County High Schools in Top 20 of Washington Post’s School Rankings

Winston Churchill in Potomac moved up to second on this year's list

By Aaron Kraut

Winston Churchill High School in Potomac MCPS

Nine high schools in Montgomery County, including eight schools in the county’s public school system, were ranked in the top 20 of The Washington Post’s 2016 list of the most challenging area high schools.

The rankings, composed by longtime Post education columnist Jay Mathews and released Sunday, assign a score to all high schools in the country based on all college-level tests given at a school in 2015 divided by the number of 2015 graduates at that school.

The national and local rankings also list the percentage of 2015 graduates who passed at least one college-level test during their high school career and the percentage of students who qualify for lunch subsidy programs.

The top-ranked school in Montgomery County was Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, which came in second in the area behind Washington International, a private school in Washington, D.C.

Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, home to the county public school system’s first International Baccalaureate magnet program, was ranked fifth. Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School was ranked No. 8, Poolesville High School came in No. 9, Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda was No. 12, Quince Orchard High School in Gaithersburg was No. 13 and Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda was No. 15.

Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville was ranked 16th and Holton-Arms, an all-girls private school in Bethesda, ranked 18th.

The 2016 list marked a big improvement for Churchill, which was ranked 12th in the area last year using the same scoring mechanism. Churchill was ranked as the 88th best high school in the country this year, the best showing on the national list by a school in the county.

Richard Montgomery improved four spots in the local rankings from ninth in 2015 and Walt Whitman moved up 13 spots from No. 25 last year.

Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, an all-girls private school in Bethesda, came in at No. 39 in this year’s local rankings, followed by No. 41 Northwest in Germantown, No. 56 Sherwood in Sandy Spring, No. 57 Montgomery Blair in Silver Spring and No. 59 Rockville.