14 Schools in Md., Va. and D.C. Earn Blue Ribbon Status

More than a dozen public and private schools in Maryland, Virginia and the District earned one of the highest distinctions in American education Tuesday, as Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced the 314 winners of the National Blue Ribbon School awards.

Duncan made the announcement at Highland Elementary School in Silver Spring, the only public school to win the award in Montgomery County this year, and a remarkable turnaround story that Duncan said he hoped would inspire similar success elsewhere.

"When I talk about turning around schools, this school is turning around," Duncan said. "It just put the lie in any myth about what children can't do."

The award goes to public schools in the top 10 percent of academic performance in their state -- private schools are judged by a national exam -- and to schools where at least 40 percent of the students are from disadvantaged backgrounds and demonstrate dramatic improvement.

Highland -- where most students qualify for free- and reduced-price meals and many speak English as a second language -- has managed to excel by any standard. Five years ago, barely half the school's fifth-graders could pass a state reading test. Last year, all 66 fifth-graders passed the test, and nearly all exhibited advanced skill.

Duncan and other officials said the school showed that with capable leadership, skilled teachers and parental support, any school can turn around, regardless of the socioeconomic disadvantages its students face.

Much of the credit for Highland's success went to principal A. Raymond Myrtle, a longtime educator who left a more affluent school for Highland, rebuilding the staff and getting the students to toe the line. Duncan said more leaders like him are needed.

"The best thing I could do would be to clone Mr. Myrtle," Duncan said. "Then my job would be done."

At winner Corpus Christi School in Falls Church, a Catholic school where 90 percent of students' families receive some form of financial aid, Principal Laura Zybrick said that the school's diverse parent community helps support teaching. They recently purchased eight computers for the school's lab. The 445-student preschool-through-eighth-grade school is the most racially diverse in the Diocese of Arlington, with large Latino and Vietnamese populations.

Zybrick noted that in the Washington area, more private schools won the award than public schools, possibly partly because private schools tend to be smaller.

"You get to know everybody and their parents, and if you lay out what the expectations are, kids rise to that expectation. When you have a faculty of 200 people, sometimes that's a little hard to do," she said.

The local public schools to receive the award also included Hammond Middle School in Laurel, Southern High School in Anne Arundel County, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax, and the Noyes Education Campus in the District.

Other private schools receiving the award were Holy Redeemer School in Kensington, Our Lady of Mercy School in Potomac, St. John Regional Catholic School in Frederick, Resurrection-St. Paul School in Ellicott City, All Saints Catholic School in Manassas, St. Agnes Catholic in Arlington County, St. Mary's School in Alexandria and the Trinity School at Meadow View in Falls Church.

Staff writer Michael Birnbaum contributed to this report.