Reply to Anne Arundel Schools: Concerned About Lack of Rigor

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m just surprised because people are super obsessed with Severna Park and making sure their kids are in that school district, like typical W parents, yet their academic outcomes are so not W school level at all. [/quote]

I'm not sure who these people are who you think are super obsessed with Severna Park.  Within AACPS, it's general one of the top -mostly just because of demographics (it's the whitest and the richest)
But I can't imagine people are comparing the top MoCo schools to SP.  Not because one is better than the other, but just because the people that would be happy living in those areas of MoCo wouldn't want to live on the Broadneck Peninsula, for example[/quote]

This is how Severna Park High School was described by the Capital Gazette, an Annapolis-based newspaper, in 2019:

[quote]Severna Park High School has one of the county’s highest graduation rates — more than 98 percent of seniors graduated in 2018.

[b]The school is known for sending students to prestigious colleges and universities. The surrounding area’s poverty rate is half that of the county average. And Severna Park is an affluent ZIP code — with a median household income of $132,000 — where students seem to have advantages over other jurisdictions. But the school has a dark history of mental illness.[/b]

There are many reasons, Parker said. Students say they’re under intense academic pressure. Some are battling drug addictions. Five counselors and one part-time psychologist serve a student body of more than 1,800.[/quote]

https://www.capitalgazette.com/education/ac-cn-mental-health-20190423-story.html

Here's a quote from the Severna Park Voice on what their community is like

[quote]The numbers paint Severna Park as a community that anyone would be proud of: a high school with a 95 percent graduation rate, with 11 state sports championships in the past five years alone, with Advanced Placement enrollment in the top 95 percentile, all in a zip code where the median family income is approximately $130,000.

But with those numbers comes the pressure on young people to excel, to outshine, to be perfect — and it is taking an emotional toll.[/quote]

https://www.severnaparkvoice.com/stories/students-and-parents-push-for-culture-shift-to-end-severna-parks-suicide-problem,27947

This is a pretty accurate picture of how the school is perceived by AACo locals: rich, full of competition, kids going to elite universities, and a striver culture. Pretty on the mark with the "W" schools in MoCo.

I don't know why some people in this thread try so very hard to deny that this image of SPHS exists among AACo locals. Severna Park HS actually has had *more* suicides than many schools in MoCo have--including some of the Bethesda/Potomac area high schools. The parents in SP are very over-the-top and prestige obsessed. To deny it is just ridiculous.[/quote]

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