At Meade High, the Changing Image Is Everything

By Mark R. Smith, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

With the buzz around Fort Meade in recent years concerning the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process and the more than 20,000 new jobs coming to the area, various facets of the post's expansion have been the topic of sometimes spirited discussion.
One concerns how many of these transplanted workers will opt out of commuting from their homes around the current Defense Information Systems Agency headquarters in Northern Virginia and move closer to Fort Meade.
A key issue for many of those potential new area residents concerns schools - notably Meade High School, which has had a history of disciplinary and racial problems, and a [relatively] low graduation rate.
However, while problems still arise, as they can at most any high school, school officials have instituted programs at Meade that have ended up attracting some of the very parents who may have shied away from buying a home near the post a few years ago.
The programs have been so successful that the national media has taken notice. For instance, Newsweek ranked Meade as one of the top 1,500 high schools in the country (No. 804) this past June "and that means that we're considered an elite high school," said Principal Daryl Kennedy.

Change for the Better
Indeed, "When BRAC was announced, Meade was an issue because no one wanted to send their kids there," said Claire Louder, president and CEO of the West Anne Arundel County Chamber of Commerce (WAACCC).
But, enter Kennedy. "He has been there for a few years and is building pride in the school among the kids. I don't think that they had that before," said Louder, noting that Kennedy just won the WAACCC's Administrator of the Year award and Homeland Security Lead Teacher Tina Edler was honored as the High School Educator of the Year at the organization's 18th Celebrate Community Awards.
A large part of the reason for those honors is the success of endeavors such as the Homeland Security and the International Baccalaureate programs for gifted students that help them gain traction in their search for a career.
"The feel of the school is different than what it was before," said Louder. "I've had Realtors tell me that people who were contemplating moving near the post are asking to be in the Meade feeder system, whereas they had been avoiding it before."
While the infusion of new and relevant programs at Meade seems almost reactionary, they all come from a grant that the school received from the federal government "about a decade ago because we wanted to change the culture of the school," said Homeland Security Signature Program Facilitator Bill Sheppard.
The concept of the Smaller Learning Communities Grant (which was shared by Meade and four other Anne Arundel County high schools) is to take a large school and segment it in various ways.
At Meade, students can chose from five career clusters: Arts/Communications/Humanities; Human Services; Business Management/Finance; Engineering/Mechanical/IT and Health/Environmental Science, said Sheppard. "We started by targeting the ninth graders, so we founded the 9th Grade Academy."
That success led, naturally enough, to the 10th Grade Academy. "Then we set up various programs so kids could get a jumpstart," he said. "One was Project Lead the Way, which is a national pre-engineering program that we've had for about seven years. It's going really well."
Sheppard said that Meade is also one of the few schools in Maryland that offers courses in biomedical science. "Not only do we have an engineering strand, but biomedical and biological strands" that are also connected to Project Lead the Way.

More Ways to Learn
Another major program at Meade for high-achieving students is perhaps more familiar to most observers: The International Baccalaureate program develops an international mindset among the students through rigorous instruction, critical thinking and student-centered activities.
Others include AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination), which provides underachieving, at-risk students with enhanced academic skills and steers them toward college.
But the most recent is the Homeland Security program. Now in its second year, its founding coincided with the county's decision to offer a signature program in each high school "and we're the only school to have its program up and running," said Sheppard. "That was a direct influence of BRAC."
While no one at the school is saying that Meade is totally out of the woods, the recent awards to Kennedy and Edler are certain indications that admirable progress has taken place: For instance, data from the Office of Civil Rights shows that freshmen enrolled in the Homeland Security program were performing better than other ninth graders in the school who were not in a special program.
Then there's the graduation rate. "We were around 93% and regularly at the bottom of the county's list 10 years ago," said Sheppard, "but we are now fourth out of the 12 county high schools.
"We have a ways to go," he said, "but I think our data indicates that Meade High School has improved during the past decade."

Fresh Perspective
Kennedy thinks so. Now in his third year as principal at Meade, he came to the school from Charlotte, N.C., seven years ago with a different perspective on the school's issues when he arrived.
"Where I came here, the test scores at Meade were not as high as the other Anne Arundel County high schools," Kennedy said, "but they were not as bad as other schools I had worked at, or others in the Baltimore metro area or around the country, either."
At that point, the graduation rate at Meade was 72%; but in some parts of Charlotte, it was only 55%.
"So I know it wasn't that bad here; it was simply a matter of perspective," he said. "I also knew that there was a great deal of potential here. There were already kids here who were doing some outstanding academic work."
And one of the things that Kennedy and company realized is that, in order to get students engaged, they "had to provide some of the best programs in the country" - in this case, the Homeland Security and International Baccalaureate programs and Project Lead the Way.
The result was that 94% graduation rate for the 2008-09 school year, which ranked Meade fourth in the county.

Moving Up - and In
While no principal wants to rank anywhere but first, that increase speaks of the progress that has been made at Meade.
"I think Meade gets a bad rap," said Mary Groven, owner/broker with 1st Choice Realty in Odenton. "[The school] offers training for all of the key local industries, be it government security work, IT and others. It's a launching pad for anything to do with the Department of Defense, be it in the public or private sectors.
"What I get is that it offers more opportunities to excel in the high tech job market than any other high school in the area," Groven said, "including any in Howard County."
So if a prospective homebuyer comes into her office with any apprehension about the Meade school district, Groven knows what to do.
"I just send them to the Meade web site so they can see all of the programs and how much academic achievement goes on there," she said, noting that she lives in the Arundel school district, but feels Meade "offers more options to the students to help them survive in the new era.
"And," Groven added, "I don't hear about any problems about kids not being safe there anymore."
"Based on the data that I see, it would be inaccurate to say that Meade has the highest number of discipline referrals in the county," said Kennedy. "No high school is without issues, but our ranking in the Newsweek poll confirms that Meade is a safe place. Otherwise, it would not be in the list."
That's just another step up in the school's massive makeover. "When I got here, there was a feeling that Meade was not an elite high school," said Kennedy, "but I would say that we are."