The secret behind an Anne Arundel high school’s surging graduation rate

Principal Kevin Carr held his cellphone up to a microphone so the students filing into Glen Burnie High’s sun-drenched gymnasium one recent Friday morning could hear “Pomp and Circumstance” over the speaker.

They giggled and whispered and hugged and rolled their eyes as they shuffled to their seats and waited for their classmates to do the same.

They were rehearsing for graduation, which is scheduled to take place Friday. But earlier this year it wasn’t clear whether dozens of them would make it across the stage.

Glen Burnie High’s graduation rate shot up nearly 7 percentage points last year — a leap bigger than any other Anne Arundel County school and greater than any other large comprehensive high school in Maryland. Carr said that’s because of his staff’s dedication to a districtwide campaign called Project Graduation and its use of a simple tool available in any school.

Launched years ago by Superintendent Mark Bedell, the initiative encourages high school staff to closely track students’ progress toward on-time graduation starting freshman year and offer credit recovery as needed. These programs help students complete condensed versions of classes they previously failed. Across the country, second-chance learning opportunities are becoming increasingly prevalent.

Carr said his team meets weekly to discuss Project Graduation but that at least one administrator, counselor or teacher in the school is working on the campaign every day.

“The faculty and staff here care,” he said. “They are as understanding and empathetic a group of educators as I’ve ever worked with. They want to see the kids be successful and graduate high school.”

Glen Burnie High’s ability to boost its graduation rate from 84.9% in 2024 to 91.5% in 2025 is even more remarkable because the statewide average slipped slightly to 86.4% during that time and because many of the students enrolled at the large, racially diverse high school come from families struggling to get by.

Situated just south of Baltimore, Glen Burnie is an urban pocket in a county that is otherwise made up of mostly suburban and rural communities. The high school, which has around 2,100 students, is a collection of six buildings on a fenced campus. The oldest of the buildings was built nearly 100 years ago.

This is Carr’s third year pursuing the Project Graduation mission to ensure all eligible seniors earn diplomas.

The work begins with a spreadsheet that Assistant Principal Karlie Magazu calls “a beast to manage.” It collects students’ letter grades, attendance rates, counselor notes, credit counts, recovery pathways and demographic information.

The student body is broken down into three groups — green, meaning on track to graduate; yellow, meaning somewhat on track; and red, meaning not on track. A formula tells administrators the highest and lowest possible graduation rates for each class based on real-time data.

Magazu, a former math teacher, said she is constantly analyzing the spreadsheet’s inputs and formulas and assessing whether she has assembled the right mix of information to meet the school’s goals.

“We use the spreadsheet to hold each other accountable,” said Magazu, whose colleagues call her a data queen.

School staff members focus on the needs of students in the red and yellow tiers, but the spreadsheet also allows them to clock when a student in the green tier unexpectedly fails a class. Then they can propose support before the problem grows. Students aren’t required to do what their counselors recommend, but many do.

Carr said the system works because his staff is stable and unified.

In the summer of 2023, after his first year as principal, he had to hire 36 teachers to fill vacancies. This summer, he expects to hire only four or five. His department chairs and administrators are expected to return this fall. More staff turnover would likely mean fewer people at the school personally invested in the Project Graduation mission or willing to track students so diligently, he said.

The spreadsheet wouldn’t matter if his staff wasn’t motivated to use it.

Any success reflected in the data starts with smart scheduling. That’s where counselors such as Lindsay Dever come in. She said she encourages freshmen to skip electives such as dance or business and fill their schedules with classes they need to graduate. That way, if a student fails a required course, they have time to retake it or recover the credits, she said.

Students often fail classes because they’re trying to avoid something, such as teachers they don’t like or assignments that feel daunting, Dever said. A big part of her job is teaching teenagers life skills such as responsibility and coping with disappointment.

“You’re not going to get to 12th grade by showing up on occasion,” she said. “You actually have to sit in these classes. You actually have to do the work.”

Other times, students’ grades slip because of their work schedules or a family tragedy.

Dever said she entered the final few weeks of the school year knowing exactly how many seniors were on the graduation bubble. There was one student she needed to hound about a final exam and another who needed to turn in a final project, among others.

She joked that she has the capacity to work 14-hour days getting seniors across the graduation stage because she is not married and has no children. “I don’t even have a goldfish,” Dever said.

One student on the bubble was a soft-spoken 19-year-old. A Spanish test and a digital photography assignment were all that stood between him and a diploma.

When he turned in the assignment two weeks before graduation, Dever, Magazu and Carr cheered for him — and one another.