a town has 3 high schools with 4,000 students each. what is the order of magnitude of the total number of high school students

"Order of Magnitude" refers to the power that 10 is raised to in the scientific notation reppresentation of a number.

So, since each school has 4000 students and there are 3 schools, we have 12,000 students. And in scientific notation, 12000 = 1.2 X 10^4.

So the order of magnitude is "4."