Blair featured in The Washington Post Magazine

The Washington Post Magazine selected Blair as one of the "30 exceptional public and private high schools from across the [Metro] region" on Sunday, April 3.

The article, "High Schools That Work" by Jay Matthews, praised Blair as a "gigantic, ethnically diverse" school where students gain an understanding of different cultures. Matthews commended Principal Phillip Gainous as "one of the area's most accomplished principals" and noted the achievements of the Magnet and Communication Arts programs. He also wrote that Silver Chips is "probably the region's best high-school newspaper" but mistakenly cited it as a CAP production. In fact, all Blair students who have taken journalism are eligible to work on the paper and web site.

Junior Samir Paul was quoted as explaining that students could participate in a wide variety of extracurricular opportunities. "Nearly anything a student might ever want – a capella singing, sports, step teams, dancing, you name it – is at Blair," he told Matthews, "and if it isn't, it's very easy to start up a club or find a following."

Over 300 people nominated noteworthy schools in September through a Back Fence Survey issued by The Washington Post Magazine last fall. After that, Washington Post writers interviewed education experts, visited schools and examined statistics to select 30 of the nominated schools. Blair, Walter Johnson and Springbrook were the only MCPS high schools to be featured in the article.

According to the article, Blair has 3,236 students, 21.3 percent of which are low-income. Students have a 42.1 percent pass rate for the state math test and a 64.5 percent pass rate on the state English test. Blair is 27.4 percent white, 32.2 percent black, 25.1 percent Hispanic and 15 percent Asian. Moreover, 86 percent of teachers have master's or Ph.D. degrees, and 59 percent of seniors go on to four-year colleges, according to the article.