Schools Serving Arlington

Arlington County is one jurisdiction with one school division, Arlington Public Schools, and APS assigns every address in the county to a neighborhood elementary school, a middle school and a high school. This page names those schools and says where the lines fall, as they stood in August 2026. It does not rate them. Boundaries move; the county's locator, linked below, is the authority.

Three high schools, and where the lines actually run

Arlington has three comprehensive high schools: Wakefield, Washington-Liberty and Yorktown. Structurally, the Washington-Liberty attendance area runs the full width of the county through its middle, so Yorktown and Wakefield share no border anywhere; every address sits on one side of that midsection or the other. The Wakefield–Washington-Liberty line runs broadly between Arlington Boulevard (US 50) and Columbia Pike. It sits on Arlington Boulevard through the western half, drops to Columbia Pike across the middle, touches Washington Boulevard, then tracks I-395 and its ramps toward the Pentagon. The Yorktown–Washington-Liberty line is the one that surprises people. In the far west it follows Arlington Boulevard near the county line, crosses the W&OD Trail and Four Mile Run, meets North Glebe Road around Waverly Hills, runs east along Lorcom Lane for roughly a mile through Cherrydale, and picks up I-66 and Spout Run Parkway at the eastern end. Between those anchors it follows residential streets and back lot lines; most of its length is nowhere near a major road. In Clarendon and Court House it drops onto Clarendon Boulevard and 10th Street North, which is why 1800 Wilson Boulevard is assigned to Yorktown while 2200 Wilson Boulevard, a few blocks west, is assigned to Washington-Liberty. "North Arlington means Yorktown" is not a rule.

Six middle schools, and the roads their lines follow

The six neighborhood middle schools are Dorothy Hamm, Gunston, Thomas Jefferson, Kenmore, Swanson and Williamsburg. These lines are more legible than the high school ones: most sit on named roads. Washington Boulevard carries the Dorothy Hamm–Thomas Jefferson line and much of the Dorothy Hamm–Swanson line, which then turns onto North Glebe Road. Langston Boulevard, with North Sycamore and North Roosevelt Streets, divides Swanson from Williamsburg. North George Mason Drive and Wilson Boulevard separate Kenmore from Swanson; South George Mason Drive, with a stretch of Columbia Pike, separates Kenmore from Thomas Jefferson; Wilson Boulevard and North Glebe Road separate Thomas Jefferson from Swanson. South Walter Reed Drive and I-395 divide Gunston from Thomas Jefferson. The exception is the Dorothy Hamm–Williamsburg line across north Arlington, which runs almost entirely on residential streets. Two zones are geographically isolated: Gunston touches only Thomas Jefferson, and Williamsburg touches only Dorothy Hamm and Swanson.

Twenty elementary boundaries, and no clean pyramid

Twenty elementary schools carry attendance boundaries: Abingdon, Alice West Fleet, Arlington Science Focus, Ashlawn, Barcroft, Barrett, Cardinal, Carlin Springs, Discovery, Dr. Charles R. Drew, Glebe, Hoffman-Boston, Innovation, Jamestown, Long Branch, Nottingham, Oakridge, Randolph, Taylor and Tuckahoe. Arlington is often described as running feeder pyramids, and that is only half true. APS draws each level independently, planning unit by planning unit, so one level's boundaries need not nest inside the next. As the county's boundary layers stood in August 2026, only Gunston, wholly inside Wakefield's area, and Williamsburg, wholly inside Yorktown's, fell entirely within a single high school zone. Dorothy Hamm and Swanson each split between Yorktown and Washington-Liberty, Thomas Jefferson between Washington-Liberty and Wakefield, and Kenmore reaches into all three. The pattern repeats a level down: Ashlawn's boundary spans both Kenmore and Swanson, so 4600 Fairfax Drive is Swanson and 5200 Wilson Boulevard is Kenmore, while Abingdon's spans three middle schools yet sits entirely inside Wakefield's area. Knowing the elementary school tells you less than most buyers assume.

Option schools, immersion and transfers change the default

Alongside the address assignment, APS runs option schools filled by lottery rather than by boundary: at elementary level, Arlington Traditional, Campbell, the Montessori Public School of Arlington, and the two Spanish dual-language immersion schools, Escuela Key and Claremont. Immersion carries a geographic rule worth knowing. The county is divided into a Key immersion attendance area covering the north and a Claremont area covering the south, split along Arlington Boulevard in the west and then Columbia Pike, South Glebe Road, Washington Boulevard and I-395, and a family may apply only to the immersion school its address falls in. The pathway then continues at Gunston for middle school and Wakefield for high school. H-B Woodlawn is an option program spanning grades 6 through 12; Arlington Tech sits at the Grace Hopper Center. Limited targeted transfers also exist: for 2026-27, a Glebe-to-Cardinal transfer open only to planning unit 16090, and a Williamsburg transfer with priority to the Nottingham, Tuckahoe and Swanson zones. Applications for 2026-27 opened November 10, 2025 and closed January 16, 2026; lotteries ran February 13, 2026. APS calls the draw double-blind, gives sibling preference at elementary level only, and gives no preference for living near a countywide option school. Applying changes nothing about the seat your address already guarantees.

What changed, and what is pending, as of August 2026

Nothing moved for this school year. In September 2023 the School Board paused a middle school boundary process, along with a proposal to relocate the Spanish immersion program. In November 2024 the Board revised boundary policy B-2.1: review every two years instead of five, four ranked criteria (efficiency, proximity, alignment, demographics), and a commitment that no student in the same home moves more than once at each school level. Then on August 21, 2025, Superintendent Francisco Durán recommended no elementary or middle school boundary changes for 2026-27; staff reported no school projected over capacity within five years and judged redrawing more disruptive than useful. The Board accepted, and said it would look again in about two years. APS published its 2026-27 boundary maps in July 2026. The Grace Hopper Center, the new home of the Arlington Career Center and Arlington Tech on South Walter Reed Drive, was scheduled to open at the start of the 2026-27 school year, which began August 31, 2026.

How to confirm an address, and what this page will not do

Enter the exact street address in the county's locator. It returns the assigned elementary, middle and high school, the immersion attendance area, the walk and bus eligibility zones, and the planning unit number: 347 units countywide, the building blocks APS uses to draw every boundary, and the fastest thing to quote when you call School and Community Relations at 703-228-6005. Check the address, not the neighborhood: Arlington's lines cut through named neighborhoods repeatedly. Treat the school field on a listing sheet as unverified; it is typed by whoever entered the listing, not pulled from APS, and nobody stands behind it. If an assignment is material, confirm it with APS registration in writing before you remove contingencies, and check again near closing, since boundaries are adopted by School Board vote and take effect at the start of a school year. You will not find schools rated, ranked or compared here. Which school serves an address is a fact, and a broker can give you facts; whether a school suits your child is your judgment, your visit, and Virginia's published report cards. School-quality talk is also a documented route to unlawful steering, and this is a licensed brokerage in Virginia, Maryland and the District.

More on the area in the Arlington guide.