Northern Virginia High Schools Near the Top

Blacksburg High is the top-performing high school in the region, according to the survey>

The NYTimes this a.m. has an interesting look at the 1,500 top performing public high schools in the country and 25 of the top 200 are in Virginia, almost all in the D.C. area where the money is.

The best from Virginia is HB Woodlawn of Arlington at 36. The top high school from this area is Blacksburg High at 410, followed by Heritage of Lynchburg at 1,383 and Patrick Henry of Roanoke (surprise!) at 1,421. I did not see another local school in the top 1,500.

Virginia had seven of the top 100 schools on the list.

Here's The Times' explanation of how the list was arrived at: "Public schools are ranked according to a ratio devised by Jay Mathews: the number of Advanced Placement, Intl. Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in 2008 divided by the number of graduating seniors. All of the schools on the list have an index of at least 1.000; they are in the top 6 percent of public schools measured this way."