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Top High Schools In Nation

The Washington Post Challenge Index measures a public high school's effort to challenge all of its students. The formula is simple: Divide the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge tests a school gave by the number of seniors who graduated in June. Tests taken by all students, not just seniors, are counted.

"I developed a scale called the Challenge Index, which used each school's rate of participation in college-level test like AP to indicate which schools were the most demanding and supportive of all students...Just taking the course and the test mattered more than the score because even struggling AP students learned a great deal." -Jay Matthews

• All of the schools on the list have an index of at least 1.000; they are in the top 5 percent of public schools measured this way.
• Subsidized lunch percentage is the percentage of students receiving federally subsidized meals.

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