Arlington High Schools Continue to Rank Among Nation’s Best

All APS High Schools Rank in Top 100 Schools in the Region

Updated May 9: The Washington Post announced its annual “Challenge Index” rankings of U.S. high schools. The index ranked all four Arlington high schools in the top 100 among the region’s high schools and showed that APS high schools continue to maintain a high ranking among all 22,000 high schools in the nation.

APS Among Top High Schools in the Region
For high schools in the metropolitan Washington area, the Challenge Index ranked all four of Arlington’s high schools in the top 100.

• H-B Woodlawn – #4
• Yorktown High School – #6
• Washington-Lee High School – #8
• Wakefield High School – #62

APS Among the Top High Schools in the Nation
Out of the 2,200 schools with a Challenge Index rating of 1.000 or higher, which includes nine percent of all high schools in the nation, APS high schools earned the following scores:

• H-B Woodlawn – #108 (with a rating of 6.29)*
• Yorktown – #125 (with a rating of 5.856)
• Washington-Lee – #143 (with a rating of 5.693)
• Wakefield – #563 (with a rating of 3.396)*

“We are all very proud of our students, teachers, and staff who set high expectations and consistently achieve excellent results,” said Superintendent Dr. Pat Murphy.  He continued, “Providing our students an array of learning opportunities and encouraging them to take rigorous courses helps prepare them to excel in post-secondary pursuits and 21st century jobs.”

“This is a great achievement for students and teachers, and is one way we can gauge how our students achieve compared to the rest of the nation,” said Superintendent Dr. Pat Murphy.”

Rankings are determined by using The Washington Post Challenge Index, which rates each school by dividing the total number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in 2016 divided by the number of graduating seniors. A score of 1.000 means the school had as many AP and/or IB tests taken as graduating seniors.

More information about the Challenge Index is available online.

*Changes reflect The Washington Post‘s revision of the rankings on June 26.