The Washington Post has ranked Clements, Austin, Kempner, Travis, Dulles and Elkins high schools as six of the Top 2011 High Schools in the Nation.
These schools represent the top 6 percent of all public high schools in the nation. Rankings are determined by a combination of the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge AICE (Advanced International Certificate of Education) tests given at the schools, compared to the number of graduating seniors.
Don’t be so impressed. Anyone can convince great numbers of students to attempt AP exams, especially if many of those student don’t have to pay but a very small price to take the exams because of family financial status. At least one of these schools will most likely not be on this list again. Also, it does not take into consideration whether the students did well enough on the exams to be awarded college credit for passing the exams. It would be better to compare scores vs campuses. Afterall, people buying homes in this district do comparison shopping (if they can keep up with the redistricting).
The full list can be found here:
http://apps.washingtonpost.com/highschoolchallenge/schools/2011/list/national/
Out of 1900 schools that were ranked:
Clements – 228
Austin – 538
Kempner – 912
Travis – 920
Dulles – 1391
Elkins – 1409