Rockville Schools Rank In Newsweek's Top 500

Newsweek's annual ranking of the top 500 public high schools in America, announced last week, included two Rockville schools.  ranked No. 102 and Richard Montgomery High School ranked No. 242.

Six other Montgomery County Public Schools made the list, including Poolesville (No. 64), Winston Churchill  (No. 91), Walt Whitman (No. 117), Bethesda-Chevy Chase (No. 145), Walter Johnson (No. 215) and Sherwood (No. 468).

Newsweek bases its rankings on six components: graduation rate, college matriculation, the number of AP courses offered and tests taken and the average scores on the SAT, Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate tests.

Wootton received an overall score of 0.747 from the magazine, which has been ranking American public schools for more than a decade. According to Newsweek, in the 2009-2010 school year Wootton students took an average of 4.2 AP or IB tests each and received an average score of 1822 (out of 2400) on the SAT. The student teacher/ratio at the school was 13.7-to-1. Wootton has a 98 percent graduation rate and 85 percent of those who graduated are going to college.

Richard Montgomery received an overall score of 0.459. Richard Montgomery students took an average of 5.4 AP or IB test each during the 2009-2010 school year—the highest average among the top Montgomery County schools, according to Newsweek. Richard Montgomery students earned an average SAT score of 1759. The student/teacher ratio was 13-to-1. The school posted a 91 percent graduation rate, with 73 percent of graduates going to college.

The list was compiled by a panel of experts, including representatives from Teach for America and Open Education Solutions and a Stanford professor of education.