Free Republic

Asian American students will outnumber white classmates for the first time in the freshman class at the region's most prestigious public magnet school this fall, a milestone reached as the number of African Americans and Hispanics has remained low and the Fairfax County School Board prepares to review the school's admission policy. At Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in the Alexandria area this year, more than 2,500 applicants vied for 485 seats. Asian American students got 219, or 45 percent of the total, while white students got 205, or 42 percent. About 38 percent of the school's...

WASHINGTON -- U.S. News & World Report says America's best high school is in Virginia, one of three to make it in the magazine's top 100. The magazine's first-ever high school rankings give the top honor to Fairfax County's elite Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Using K-12 data research and analysis business run by Standard & Poor's, the magazine put high schools in 40 states through a three-step analysis. U.S. News and World measured how each school's students performed on state tests, adjusting for student circumstances. Then it evaluated how well each school's disadvantaged students did. Lastly,...