Kent County High has just being recognized as one of the best high schools in Maryland. The 2018 National Rankings earned Kent County High School a bronze medal.
Schools are ranked based on their performance on state-required tests and how well they prepare students for college. Read more about how the Best High Schools are ranked here.
Ranked as the 49th Best High School in Maryland and Recognized in National Rankings, higher than all Eastern Shore school’s other than North Caroline High, Snow Hill High and Stephen Decataur High.
Joe Macoy says
I viewed the attachment to read more about the “Best High Schools”, and how they are ranked. As the only high school on Kent County, I would have hoped for greater achievements in the Graduation Rate (89 percent) and the College Readiness evaluation (only 20.9 percent). If that ranks the school 49th out of more than 500 high schools in the state, I am scared. You should be too!
Francoise Sullivan says
The average Maryland high school graduation rate is 87%. KCHS is doing better than many schools in Maryland. As you mention our school is small and the only high school in Kent County but that means that any small shift in the student population could have a big impact on the numbers – both negatively and positively. In addition to this state ranking our high school has some of the highest percentages of dual completers in the state (CTE and college readiness). The recently passed More Jobs for Marylanders Act has an achievement goal of 45% dual completers by the year 2025 – KCHS has consistently topped this. In 2017 KCHS had 72% dual completers in the graduating class. There is room for improvement but our schools are on an upward trajectory – which is something to applaud and celebrate.
Congratulations to all of our students and teachers for their hard work and dedication!
Robbi Behr says
Hello Joe – just want to respond to your comment. While there is certainly lots of room for improvement in our scores (and in scores across the state), it’s important to note the limits of academic testing. In the US News assessment, step 2 is described as such: “Underserved students performed better than the state average… we compared each school’s reading and mathematics assessment scores among only their historically underserved students – black, Hispanic and low-income – with the average statewide results for these subgroups. We selected schools that outperformed their state averages.”
We hover around 50% poverty/low-income in our schools which generally translates to a lot of students struggling with issues outside of the classroom that obviously have an impact on how they succeed (or not) IN the classroom. You can’t expect a student to perform well on a test when they haven’t eaten since the last meal they were fed at school or they’ve been working late to support their family.
Our schools are doing much better than the state average serving those communities – so comparing ourselves to generally affluent and educated populations of families isn’t entirely fair (which is why this step is included in their assessment, I’m guessing). This is a particularly challenging statistic to meet which is not clearly reflected in the test scores you cite. We are outperforming the state average in helping our underserved students by 5.6%, according to this study. Which is to say, we should be pretty proud of that number as well.
Marsha Fritz says
Go back to high school, any high school, specifically English class. The plural of school is schools.
Wallace Reynolds says
Hats off to all those wonderful teachers, administrators, volunteers and students that reached high!
Gretchen Stroh says
220% college readiness is pretty sad. And looking at the class sizes, it looks like there is a significant drop in class size for jr and sr classes. I’m wondering if that differences reflects a drop out rate? The best thing Kent Co. has going for it is it’s Vo-Tec program. Which is the best in the state, and has the highest certification rate in the state. (about 70%)49th out of 500 puts us in the top 10%. Knowing the school, that is a very sad statement about the other 90%.
Lynn McLain says
Thrilled to see such great news about Kent County High! We need to get this news OUT over and over again, to help to combat the persistent rep that Kent County schools aren’t as good as neighboring counties, which has reportedly affected numerous families’ decisions not to live in Kent County.