Something else D.C. is pretty good at? Setting scientific education standards for our public school students. The District tied with California to top a national survey of science curricula. more ›

The District topped yet another ranking, this time for the percentage of low-income students enrolled in the school breakfast program. more ›

More from the Rankings Department: we're a very literate and pretty generous city. more ›

Last week The Daily Beast didn't include the District in its list of the country's top 20 most tolerant cities, and now Travel and Leisure has us ranked as the third rudest city in the U.S.: more ›

If you want a great cocktail, head to The Passenger. But how about a great beer? more ›

How tolerant is the District? Apparently less so than Durham, Baltimore, Austin, Trenton, Tampa and a host of other cities. Or so The Daily Beast would have you believe. more ›

The Daily Beast ranked U.S. cities according to their dating scenes. Washington came in No. 10, bested only by a bunch of college towns. Not on the list? You'll never guess. more ›

Georgetown University may be well known for being something of an establishment university, the sort of place where a young politician-to-be can begin to amass a sense of what it takes to be powerful and the types of friends required to get their. But it's also a great place for hipsters and vegans. more ›

In what has, for whatever silly reason, become the story to chat about around the local media this week, Parenting magazine rated Washington D.C. the number one place for families in the country, citing our vast supply of cultural institutions, recreational opportunities and kid-friendly restaurants as signs that the District is the place to raise a kid. Of course, not everyone agrees. more ›

The popularity of the Washington R*******, despite Washington's lemming-like insistence on religiously following the team regardless of its failures on the field and off, has been in the toilet for some time. But we never realized things were this bad (okay, maybe we did): Dan Snyder's cash cow is the second-worst franchise in professional sports. more ›

For those curious, here's how the candidates in the upcoming D.C. Council special election fared on the election season questionnaire handed out by the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, D.C. more ›

Is the District the most well-read city in the United States? Central Connecticut State University says so: their annual rankings of America’s Most Literate Cities ranks Washington, DC at the top of the list. more ›

According to new data from the Brookings Institution, D.C.'s home price recovery is "among the worst in the nation," ranking 33rd on a list of the 100 biggest housing markets. What's that you say? You thought the D.C. housing market was doing pretty well, up, say, 4.5 percent year over year? more ›

According to the people over at Business Insider, who apparently have the resources to pen double-bylined stories which basically entail reporters looking up swear words on Google, says that for the second straight year, a Virginia suburb is "the most obscene place in America." Ashburn, Virginia earned the award this year -- in 2009, Herndon took top honors as the place to get your expletive on. (Herndon finished third this year.) more ›

Hey, did you guys read the news this morning? We're basically living inside Thunderdome! "Report: D.C., Baltimore among most dangerous cities" shouts the headline on WTOP this morning -- the story opens by informing us that we should all be locking up our wallets and never leaving the house ever again: "The list...lists D.C. as the fourth most unsafe city with more than half a million people." Egads! Of course, once you get past the lede and actually look at the study, there is good cause to not start preparing for martial law quite yet. The District actually finished as the 22nd "most dangerous" city on the list (PDF). We also thought that we'd quote this reaction from Houston Mayor Annise D. Parker in full, since it does a nice job of condensing all the issues with these rankings that we've read so far this morning: “These rankings represent a gross misuse of FBI data...Everyone with the slightest knowledge of this issue knows the rankings are not credible, but the publication persists with them, presumably because rankings are popular and sell books. Unfortunately, they also do real harm to the reputation and economy of the cities that come out on the losing end, often through no fault of their own.” Good, now we can all feel safe enough to go out and do the other thing that the media is telling us to do ad nauseam this week! more ›

A Newsweek report shows that 7 of the 10 richest counties in the country are in the D.C. metro region. Newsweek used data from the 2009 Census to inform their rankings. The richest county in the country is Virginia's Loudoun County, with a median income of a staggering $114,204. Following are VA's Fairfax County (number 2), MD's Howard County (number 3), VA's Arlington County (number 5), MD's Montgomery County (number 6), MD's Calvert County (number 9), and MD's Charles County (number 10). Yeah, those suburbanites have a lot of money. more ›

Okay, so maybe we're not the best looking people around. But according to a report by the Social Science Research Council's American Human Development Project initiative, the Washington region is doing pretty well for itself when it comes to life expectancy, education and income, topping a ranking of the ten largest American metro areas in those statistics. The long life expectancy of white D.C. residents (the longest among any group in the survey at 83.1 years), large numbers of people with college educations (about 47 percent of the D.C. region have at least a bachelor's degree) and the employment and income boost that the federal government provides to the District and her surrounding suburbs were the driving forces that landed the Washington metro area the top spot. Take that, you shallow Travel+Leisure readers! [Ed. Note: A few people have expressed that this post -- in its haste to grab a quick laugh on the back of yesterday's "attractiveness" rankings -- failed to note some pertinent statistics revealed in the report, like the fact that black D.C. residents have the lowest life expectancy of blacks in any state. I certainly didn't mean to trivialize these aspects of the study by not mentioning them, and apologize to anyone offended by their omission.] more ›

This is totally going to bring everyone down, I know, but: Travel+Leisure's readers have arbitrarily decided that we're a bunch of ugly people. (Not quite as unattractive as, say, Memphis, but still.) more ›

You might think that it'd take a little longer than a month and a half, give or take, to change your level of "gay-supportiveness." (It just doesn't seem like one of those wishy-washy things you can flip-flop on.) But apparently that's not the case -- as long as you can prove that you've got the record. more ›

This blogger approves of the Red Derby. It features good beer, some tasty eats and is generally far enough removed from the main drag that it has yet to be completely taken over by the masses. But calling it one of the most family friendly establishments in town sounds...off. But sure enough, the bar, located at 3718 14th Street NW, was named by Citysearch as the third-best "Family Friendly Restaurant" in the D.C. area. (A tip of the cap to Jonathan O'Connell for the link.) That's impressive, considering I've never even seen one child at the dive bar, let alone multiple families eating there at once -- even during weekend brunch. I mean, did they earn the ranking because the bar features numerous board games? (Which is awesome, don't get me wrong.) Well, from the looks of it, there may be some ballot-box shenanigans afoot -- nothing against the folks at Co Co Sala, but they're showing up in the top three of a lot more of these lists than we would have imagined. It's either that, or the popularity of mommy happy hours is even more unstoppable than we thought. more ›

Most of the drivers around this region -- whether they're from Maryland, Virginia or the District -- just plain suck. This is not new. more ›

Ah, the listicle. A summertime tradition! The District does not lack for honors (and dishonors) when the temperature is at its height and its just easier to crunch some numbers and put together a list than hit the streets and do some real reporting. Of course, we are always somewhat piqued when we see our fair city being judged in comparison to other cities and states. Maybe we're just competitive. more ›

So Forbes decided that they should release yet another iteration of their "most valuable teams in sports" list, eh? I guess I can't blame them -- after all, here I am writing about it, so as far as they're concerned, mission accomplished. The Redskins once again performed well, ranking fourth on the list with a value of a little over $1.5 billion dollars. Right. $1.5 billion dollars. Approximately the same value that Forbes slapped on the team in September 2009. And September 2008. So either the Redskins are the most stable business ever, or these Forbes rankings are really a pointless venture. We'll go with the latter. more ›

Take that, west coast. Washington, D.C. is the most "veg-friendly" city in North America, according to PETA-affiliated blog, The Peta Files. D.C. beat out nearly every single large city on the left coast, ranking higher than Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, San Francisco and Los Angeles. (Olympia, Washington did top the blog's list of smaller cities.) more ›

We've written about ESPN's Ultimate Standings before -- last year, the big story was the 39-place jump that the Capitals made, placing sixth. This year, the Caps maintained a high ranking (11th), but the real story is how pitiful the Redskins fared. Dan Snyder's boys dropped all the way to 105th out of 122 teams, lower than such moribund franchises as the Kansas City Royals, the Buffalo Bills and the New York Islanders -- even the Nationals finished well above the 'Skins, although 94th place is hardly anything to write home about. One look at the metrics utilizaed, and one immediately understands why the Redskins did poorly: fan relations, ownership, affordability, stadium experience, players and "bang for the buck" are hardly criteria which the Redskins have excelled in in recent years. The Redskins can take solace in the fact that they didn't finish as the lowest Washingtonian representative in the rankings: that honor goes to the Wizards, who finished third-to-last. (Still better than the Clippers, though.) more ›

There's an almost palpable gnashing of teeth as Glenn Beck et al. were just handed another reason for middle Americans to bash our nation's capital. According to legal blog Above the Law, D.C. beat out San Francisco in a 61 percent blowout as the top destination for lawyers in a March Madness style poll. more ›

Normally, we complain mightily when the District of Columbia is lumped in with the states in rankings of best or worst of whatever. Being entirely urban, D.C. just isn't suited to being included among lists of states that are a mix of urban, suburban and rural areas. Compare us to other cities, sure, but for the most part, results of state rankings that include the District end up painting a skewed picture of where we really stand. But The Daily Beast's new list of the most and least attractive looking states? Well, we'll take our No. 1 ranking and run. Washingtonians are used to being teased about being "Hollywood for ugly people," so being named the hottest of all the states, even with the obvious methodological issues at hand, is a lovely change of pace. more ›

The American Institute for Economic Research put out its 2009-2010 college destination rankings today (hat tip to the Post), and D.C. was named fourth most desirable for college students on a list of large metropolitan areas in the country, ranked behind only New York, San Francisco and Boston. The news that D.C. is a top college destination comes as no big surprise to us. Not only does the area have a large number of desirable universities and a high percentage of college students compared to the overall population, it also has a large number desirable post-college jobs, making the city quite frankly (in our minds) a smarter choice than places like San Francisco or New York this particular year. more ›