Best High Schools in Zip Code 20866

Zip code 20866 in Burtonsville, MD, is home to a single high school, Paint Branch High, which serves grades 9 through 12 as part of the Montgomery County Public Schools district.

Paint Branch High is a large school with over 2,000 students and a student-teacher ratio of 15.5:1. The school shows a stark contrast in academic performance: it excels in English Language Arts (ELA) with a 55.4% proficiency rate, which is above the state average, but struggles significantly in mathematics, where only 7.1% of students are proficient—a rate far below both the district (36.9%) and state (27.1%) averages. This math proficiency gap is the school's most critical challenge. The school's graduation rate is 85.8%, slightly below the district average, and its chronic absenteeism rate of 25.9% is notably higher than the district's 22.6%.

Despite a high per-student spending of $19,446, the low math scores suggest that financial resources alone are not solving the issue. The school's state ranking has also declined from the 61st percentile to the 50th percentile over recent years, indicating it is losing ground compared to other Maryland high schools. For parents, the key takeaway is that Paint Branch High offers strong ELA instruction but has a severe, school-wide math deficiency that requires targeted intervention. The combination of high absenteeism and poor math performance points to a need for focused support in this area.