U.S. News & World Report is out with its 2025 ranking of the nation’s best high schools, and one Virginia high school made the top 10.
Schools making the honor roll in our area include Alexandria’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, ranked No. 5 nationally and No. 1 in Virginia. It’s also the 5th ranked STEM school in the nation. Following controversial changes to its admissions policy in 2021 to boost diversity, Thomas Jefferson slipped out of the the top 10 nationally in 2023.
Langley High in McLean and Woodson High School in Fairfax also ranked in the top five in the state.
As for Maryland, U.S. News ranked Baltimore’s Eastern Technical No. 125 nationally and No. 1 in the state. Other standout high schools in the state include Walt Whitman (#2), Wootton (#3), Poolesville (#4) and Winston Churchill (#8) — all in Montgomery County.
In D.C., BASIS DC was ranked No. 139 nationally. Benjamin Banneker Academy High School was ranked No. 178 nationally. In the city, the top-ranked school this year is the School Without Walls, a public magnet high school in Foggy Bottom.
The top three high schools in the nation:
- BASIS Tucson North, Tucson, Arizona
- Signature School, Evansville, Indiana
- Central Magnet School, Murfreesboro, Tennessee
The top three charter schools:
- BASIS Tucson North, Tucson, Arizona
- Signature School, Evansville, Indiana
- The Albuquerque Institute of Math and Science, Albuquerque, New Mexico
The top three science, technology, engineering & math (STEM) schools:
- High Technology High School, Lincroft, New Jersey
- BASIS Chandler, Chandler, Arizona
- BASIS Peoria, Peoria, Arizona
The U.S. News Best High Schools rankings evaluate data from over 24,000 public high schools across the country. About 18,000 of those schools were ranked based on six key factors — college readiness, state assessment proficiency, state assessment performance, underserved student performance, college curriculum breadth and graduation rate.
