Similar nearby schools
Most similar nearby schools
Howard High → Baltimore Polytechnic Institute → Mount Hebron High → Oakland Mills High → Long Reach High → Marriotts Ridge High → Atholton High → Digital Harbor High School →📋 At a glance
- 📚 27 AP courses offered — Elite
- ✅ Gifted & talented program
- 🔢 4 calculus classes · 20 physics · 22 chemistry
- 🎓 AP rigor: 86th percentile nationally
- 📝 SAT/ACT participation: 83th percentile by test-taker volume
- 🎓 4-yr grad rate: 92% (60th percentile nationally)
Composed from federal CRDC offerings, EDFacts ACGR, and other public data. Full breakdowns below.
How Catonsville High compares for families
Standout academic depth by national standards.
- ▸ StatewideAP rigor in the top 14% nationally with 27 AP courses.
- ▸ LocallyMD sits right at the US average on NAEP 8th-grade math — local school quality will set your kid apart.
- ▸ vs Similar SchoolsThe closest comparables nearby: Howard High, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, Mount Hebron High and 5 more. See the sidebar to compare side-by-side.
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🎓 Academic rigor
AP + advanced-course offerings
Elite — exceptional AP + advanced course breadth
86th percentile nationally
Source: federal Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC 2020-21). CRDC reports what's offered + enrolled — it doesn't collect AP exam pass rates (College Board owns that data and doesn't release it school-level).
SAT / ACT participation
CRDC federal data · 2020-2183th percentile by test-taker volume
Source: federal Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC 2020-21). Volume — not score — is what's reported here. A higher count means more students at this school are entering the college admissions pipeline. Note: 2020-21 was COVID-disrupted; some districts (especially those that stayed remote longer) report unusually low or zero takers.
🎓 4-year graduation rate · federal EDFacts
What % of students graduate on time?
60th percentile nationally
Source: federal EDFacts ACGR (Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate), 2019 vintage via Urban Institute. EDFacts publishes a range (low-high) to preserve privacy on small cohorts; we display the midpoint.
👩🏫 Teacher workforce · federal CRDC
Teacher experience & reliability
Source: federal Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC 2017-18 — the most recent vintage that publishes per-school teacher quality fields; the 2020-21 sweep had them suppressed). "Inexperienced" = teachers in their first or second year. "Chronic absence" = teachers absent 10+ days/year.
🏛️ Federal Title I context
Title I Schoolwide eligible
≥40% FRPL — qualifies for Title I Schoolwide program
40-74% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch. The district can use Title I funds across the whole school under federal Schoolwide Program rules.
Source: NCES Common Core of Data, free/reduced-price lunch eligibility. The actual Title I designation is a district decision and may differ from eligibility — but the federal eligibility math is what we show here. We don't claim to assert whether the district formally chose to enroll this school in Title I.
🏛️ Your state's public flagship
University of Maryland-College Park
The in-state tuition gap is the flagship's biggest draw — most in-state families pay far less than the out-of-state sticker. Average net price after aid runs about $15,678/yr. Admission odds depend on your student's GPA and test scores, not which high school they attend.
Source: IPEDS admissions, tuition & enrollment + College Scorecard net price. Flagship = the state's primary public research university.
Chronic absenteeism
Why this matters to enrollment: Chronic absence is the most reliable early indicator that a student will leave a school — either by transferring out, dropping out, or matriculating to a charter or private alternative. At this level, today's absentees become next year's enrollment loss and the year-after's revenue loss. For school leaders: an Enrollment Trend Audit traces this dynamic forward →
Source: U.S. Department of Education, Civil Rights Data Collection 2020–2021. Rate = students chronically absent ÷ 2024 total enrollment.
Counselor capacity
Source: U.S. Department of Education, Civil Rights Data Collection 2020-2021. Counselor ratio = the school's most recent total enrollment ÷ counselor FTE. The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommends a 250:1 maximum; the US national median across schools with on-staff counselors is roughly 430:1.
Enrollment trend & projection
Total enrollment + grade 12, NCES Common Core of Data (2021–2024).
If the recent trend holds…
At its recent rate of -1.3%/year, projecting from 2024's 1,735 students:
≈ 109 fewer students by 2029 — a real revenue/relevance risk worth getting ahead of.
An extrapolation of the recent trajectory, not a forecast of the school's plans; ignores one-off shocks.
Revenue at risk
At $18,010 per student in district revenue, the 109 students projected to be lost by 2029 represent ≈ $1,963,090/year in funding at risk.
District total revenue ÷ enrollment, NCES F-33. Public funding largely follows enrollment, so a shrinking class is a recurring budget hit.
Most similar nearby high schools
The schools most like this one — same type, blended on distance and size — and where their enrollment is heading. These are the schools families here weigh against each other.
| School | Type | Miles | HS enrollment | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Howard High Ellicott City |
Public | 4.9 | 1,493 | -16.7% |
| Baltimore Polytechnic Institute Baltimore |
Public | 7.6 | 1,632 | +1.9% |
| Mount Hebron High Ellicott City |
Public | 6.4 | 1,455 | -11.2% |
| Oakland Mills High Columbia |
Public | 6.7 | 1,413 | +5.8% |
| Long Reach High Columbia |
Public | 5.6 | 1,334 | -18.6% |
| Marriotts Ridge High Marriottsville |
Public | 11.7 | 1,741 | +4.8% |
| Atholton High Columbia |
Public | 9.4 | 1,540 | +5.8% |
| Digital Harbor High School Baltimore |
Public | 6.7 | 1,359 | -0.6% |