Arlington High Schools Continue to Rank Among Nation’s Best All APS High Schools See Increase in Ratings

Arlington High Schools Continue to Rank Among Nation’s Best Today, 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 75 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 75.

• H-B Woodlawn – #1
• Yorktown – #6
• Washington-Lee – #10
• Wakefield – #73

APS Among the Top High Schools in the Nation Out of the 2,300 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 – #53 (with a rating of 7.093)
• Yorktown – #121 (with a rating of 5.510)
• Washington-Lee – #143 (with a rating of 5.183)
• Wakefield – #714 (with a rating of 2.837)

“Our schools continue to focus on challenging and engaging our students to stretch by challenging themselves through more rigorous courses. We are focused on providing pathways and more rigorous opportunities for PreK-12 students that will lead to an increase in opportunities as they become college and career ready,” said Superintendent Dr. Pat Murphy. “I am pleased that APS continues to be ranked among the finest in the nation, and it is a testament to our dedicated team of administrators and instructional staff, working with our students, parents and the Arlington community that we are seeing this level of continuous improvement.” 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 2013 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. The full Challenge Index list is available online.