With Few Public Options, Competition to Get Into Top High School Programs Is Fierce

With a 3.83 grade-point average, Nathan Saunders has been working hard to make it into a top school. He's in the junior honor society, the art club, and is treasurer of the gentlemen's association, a mentoring and community service group for boys.

His goal is to attend Morehouse College or Howard University, two of the nation's top historically black colleges. But his applications to those schools won't go out until 2011. Right now, the 13-year-old from Largo is worried about high school.

Nathan, an eighth-grader at Ernest Everett Just Middle School in Mitchellville, is among nearly 1,500 students who have applied to the science and technology program at Eleanor Roosevelt in Greenbelt, the leading public high school in Prince George's County as measured by scores on statewide tests.

Roosevelt admits between 225 and 250 students to its highly regarded program each year -- an admission rate just slightly more forgiving than a typical Ivy League university.

Nathan has also applied to Charles H. Flowers High School in Springdale, which is nearly as difficult to get into. The schools will notify students and their parents in March. Those who don't get accepted will have to consider one of the county's other public schools or a costly private education.

Beyond Roosevelt and Flowers, Prince George's County high schools have performed poorly on statewide tests, finishing behind every Maryland school system except Baltimore's.

That has led parents such as Lavon Snowden, whose son Alex is an eighth-grader at Holy Trinity Episcopal Day School in the county, to write off the public schools. "I'm trying to be politically correct," Snowden said, "but I just would not be comfortable" with Alex going to his neighborhood school.

In the Washington area, only the District suffers from a similar skepticism toward public education. In Montgomery and Fairfax counties, for instance, there are plenty of schools with strong test scores to choose from.

Since taking over the Prince George's system in May, schools chief John E. Deasy has fought to enhance the public schools' reputation by ensuring that all high schools offer academic programs as challenging as those at Roosevelt. He is pushing a broad package of changes, including the expansion of Advanced Placement courses and the International Baccalaureate program, bolstering the involvement of parents, improving teacher qualifications and offering parents more choices about what kinds of schools their children can attend.

But Deasy has said it could be years before such changes make an impact.

In the interim, that leaves the school system to face the loss of bright students to area private schools, which can be as competitive as their collegiate counterparts.

Nathan is applying to three popular Catholic schools: DeMatha, Bishop McNamara and St. John's College High School.