"but it is clear that some schools that don't offer Advanced Placement classes were on the list, which seemed hard to understand because one of the criteria used to rank the schools was the number of A.P. classes students took."

From the website,
Criteria for Medals:

Gold Medal: Top 100 schools nationally based on the College Readiness Index

Silver Medal: all other schools with a college readiness index of at least 20 but that are not ranked in the top 100 nationally

Bronze Medal: either do not offer AP or IB or do not achieve a college readiness index of at least 20 but successfully meet the other two key performance indicator criteria

Honorable Mention: schools that achieved very high levels of college readiness but only partially met state test performance criteria

As a former Baltimore County Student, it makes me wonder why the writer of this blog would single out Dulaney as an example of a school left off the list. I was not a student at a school in the North-central region of Baltimore County but still I have persevered. I have graduated from college and now law school. Why should that make the school that I went to any worse. Simply becuase the lack of influential parental money? I am a pround alum of Kenwood High in Essex and took both AP and IB level classes while there. I participated on sports teams and was a member of the Sports Science Academy. I graduated high in my class and like I siad, I have achieved greatly. Putting Dulaney ahead of every other school in Baltimore County is a crock. How about, congratulations to Western School of Technology and Environmnetal Science instead. I am (not really suprisingly so)finding it hard to believe that Dulaney offers that much better of an education. Then again I went to Kenwood, lived in Lansdowne and didn't have the smae up-bringing as the Dunaley students. Maybe instead of harboring anger for your school not making the list, you should have concentrated on congratulating the area schools that did make the list. Then again, why should you, you have an allegience to Dulaney and nothing is as good as Dulaney...

The Inside Ed writer forgot to mention Pikesville High School's glaring absence from the list. Unfortunately, Baltimore County's policies over the last 20 years has destroyed what was once one of the best public high schools in the country. It is time that the Board of Education stop social re-engineering because the experiment destroyed Pikesville High School.

"high schools that appears to give greater weight to whether the school's disadvantaged population has done better on state tests than average."

Some schools did not make the list because they don't have a sizable disadvantaged population.

Poly is not listed as a magnet school in the list. It is also not listed as "merit-based" entrance.

Both of these are errors, but still nice to see national confirmation on the excellence of Poly.

Palo Alto High School dropped off of US News and World Report's "gold medal" list of high schools this year. Read about it here: http://voice.paly.net/view_story.php?id=7607

I know this is a strange place to mention it, but while I'm thinking of the topic of rankings, why wasn't the University of Baltimore mentioned at all in your recent U.S. News rankings roundup?

I can't find the article, but I know that it was published sometime within the last couple of weeks. If I remember correctly, UB was not mentioned at all.

I would understand leaving it for the bottom of the article, but omitting it entirely seems more like oversight than prioritization. Please consider including some sort of mention of the institution next year.