Coordinates: 38°46′56″N 77°08′01″W / 38.78222°N 77.13361°W / 38.78222; -77.13361 Thomas Alva Edison High School is one of twenty-five high schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. Thomas Edison is an International Baccalaureate school. Edison High School has traditionally been a relatively small public high school in terms of the size of its student population. It has a culturally and ethnically diverse student body. Its student body and graduating classes in the mid- and late 1990s and early 2000s included students of Australia, Korean, Eritrean, Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, Cambodian, Polish, Italian, Mexican, Colombian, Ghanaian, Cameroonian, and Pakistani ancestries or nationalities. The diverse religious backgrounds of the students ranged from as some examples from Christians to Buddhists, Muslim, Jews, and etc . The school's diversity clearly reflected the massive influx of immigrants to the Northern Virginia region generally. In the 1990s, the school's debate and forensics teams gained widespread and even national recognition for their achievements in those fields. Its academic team has appeared on the local television quizbowl game show "It's Academic", which is broadcast by the local Washington, DC PBS affiliate stations, WETA PBS & WETA METRO. Edison's graduates have typically moved on to attend local and state colleges and universities such as Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, George Mason University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Northern Virginia Community College, and George Mason University. Prominent graduates of the school have included Jan Smith, a local television news reporter and wife of nationally renowned TV journalist Sam Donaldson, and Eric Barton, a professional American football player with the National Football League. In both 1996 and 1997 Edison's theater club won second place and then first place and the regional level of the VHSL one-act play festival. From Wikipedia
