Finding The Best Schools among Fairfax County High Schools is tough. Should you use SAT scores? Or SOLs? How about using The Ultimate Ranking?

Choosing The Best Schools is a very personal thing – like choosing a running shoe

Do you like your running shoes cushioned, or minimalistic?  Or do you choose by them by color? Most people, before they choose their running shoes, they research ratings to help them get a more objective point of view on which the best ones might be.

Choosing among Fairfax County High Schools is a matter of personal preference (like choosing shoes)

Like when choosing a shoe, choosing the best school requires research

Are you partial to large schools with lots of resources, or are you more comfortable with small, community-fostering schools?   Or perhaps there is a sport program that is of the utmost importance to your selection. Or a foreign language.

Regardless of personal preference, most people research to find the best schools first and then narrow down their choice based on their special program requirements.

And what they mean by best schools is, generally, using some kind of rating or score to compare the schools using an objective measure.

Choosing the best school using scores can be helpful… sometimes

Choosing one score to use to find “the best school” can be tricky, especially when comparing Fairfax County high schools.  Should you use the average SAT scores by school?  Or perhaps the Standards of Learning (SOLs)?  Or, maybe The Washington Post’s Challenge Index®?

In the past several weeks, we have published Fairfax County high schools rankings using these scoring methods.

And the feedback has been quite positive – except that, when faced with more than one ranking, it’s difficult again to compare them all and come up with the simple answer to:  “What are theBest Fairfax County High Schools?” Continue Reading…