Summary:
Zip code 20902 in Silver Spring, Maryland, is home to one high school, John F. Kennedy High, which serves grades 9-12 and is part of the Montgomery County Public Schools district, a highly-rated 4-star district ranked in the top third of Maryland.
John F. Kennedy High is a large school with 1,880 students and a student-teacher ratio of 14.9:1. The school faces significant challenges, particularly in mathematics, where only 8.7% of students are proficient, compared to the district average of 36.9% and the state average of 27.1%. English Language Arts performance is stronger at 42.4% proficiency, though still below the district average of 58.5%. The most pressing issue is a severe student engagement crisis: the chronic absenteeism rate is 48.9%, more than double the district average of 22.6%, and the graduation rate is just 72.9%, well below the district's 88.7%. The dropout rate of 19.6% is also more than double the district's 8.2%.
Despite spending $20,159 per student—a substantial amount—the school is not achieving competitive academic results or high graduation rates. The majority of students (55.96%) qualify for free or reduced lunch, indicating a high-poverty student body. The school's performance is an outlier within the successful Montgomery County Public Schools district, suggesting that its challenges are concentrated at this specific school rather than being district-wide. For parents, the most critical takeaway is that John F. Kennedy High requires urgent intervention focused on improving attendance and re-engaging students, as the low test scores and graduation rates are symptoms of a deeper engagement problem.
Thank you for your feedback!