Public schools (Dallas, Austin, Round Rock: neighborhood, best school, college)

[jifie]

Anyone know how Austin public schools rank among the state and among other states? I'm habing trouble finding actual good rankings on this topic, all I really have is word of mouth, which isnt too good so far.

I have a friend of mine that had kids that started school in TX, then moved to CA and found they were completely behind the learning curve in this state, almost a full year behind. Recently, he is having to put them back in school in TX for a year and is finding that his kids are now very well ahead of their peers.

I know its hard to judge a states or cities school system if you've lived there forever, growing up and going to school in Maryland I thought the schools sucked, but come to find out, we had one of the best school systems in the nation. Anyone have any thoughts?

[Trainwreck20]

Depends on the school and district, really. Greatschools.net ranks schools, although I have never paid much attention to how it does it. In AISD there are many schools that I think are excellent, and some not so much.

[capcat]

It seems the only state that's really ahead of the pack is Massachusetts. So maybe...go east, young man?

CA doesn't look too bad, Texas doesn't look too good. I'm guessing AISD is fairly representative of the state.

[hoffdano]

Schools in Texas are highly variable in quality. It is impossible to truly say schools in any particular city or the state have any particular quality.

In the Austin area, there are many Independent School Districts (ISDs). The groupings below are my opinions, a bit arbitrary, and I don't mean to pick a fight with anyone. Others may have a different perspective.

Best
- Eanes (small, wealthy)
- Round Rock (bigger, very solid overall)
- Lake Travis (faster growing, consistently good)

Better
- Leander (large, fast growing, solid)
- Dripping Springs (rural flavor, good performance)
- Pflugerville

Average
- Austin (wide range of school performance, some very good, some poor, neighborhood specific)

Challenged
- Bastrop

[compSciGuy]

I've lived in Austin (went to AISD and Eanes) and worked on a project where I travelled to Lompoc before (supporting NASA launch). When it was mentioned that I went to Berkeley before, I was accused of not being qualified and a token because I was Chinese. I'm sorry, the main businesses around Lompoc are the Air Force Base and the prison, but somebody is seriously trolling ... If you or your friend love California so much, that's great, feel free to enjoy your state. However, don't you have something better to do than to make up Texas BS.

[austinnerd]

The OP's specific question is probably best answered by those who have a direct point of comparison, but here is something to chew on based on NewsWeek's high school rankings (this is a snippet of an email I sent to someone earlier in the year when the rankings came out):

Newsweek listing of the top high schools in the nation:

rank school student graduation % college AP/IB
teacher rate bound Tests
ratio %
---- --------- ------- ------------- --------- ------
21 LASA 16.7 100 96 6.7
47 Westwood 29.1 98 93 4.6
72 Westlake 14.0 98 87 5.3
144 Harmony 12.3 100 86 3.8
474 Anderson 13.4 93 77 2.6
488 Lake Travis 16.0 94 79 1.8

First time I've seen Westwood ranked higher than Westlake. Don't know if the Westwood student/teacher ratio is correct since it seems out of whack with the others. Texas had 14 in the top 100 and 3 in the top 10. The Dallas/Ft Worth area had #1, #2, #10 (2 magnet schools and 1 prep school). The AP/IB number is the average number of AP/IB tests taken per graduate, this seems a bit misleading since IB works differently than AP so it may be skewed a bit towards schools that focus on AP vs IB.

California had 10 schools in the top 100 (4 less than Texas) and only 1 school in the top 10 (#8 in Irvine).

So based on that measure, it wouldn't seem at first blush that Cali schools are "better". Of course it's impossible to generalize from one persons experience. Even within Austin (let alone TX or the US) you are going to have different experiences in different schools (even on the same campus ala LASA/LBJ). Plus the above is for high schools (it would be pretty impracticable to rank below that level) so the variations in middle/elementary schools is just going to be more significant. Speaking of which, again if he above numbers have any meaning at all, having some variation at the below high school level in the end would appear to "wash out". In other words, even if Cali elementary/middle schools were somehow more "advanced" than Tx, the above rankings would seem to imply that by the time the kiddos got to high school, that any difference doesn't really matter. At least on the high end anyway, maybe the numbers tell us that in the top 10% it doesn't matter, but we just don't see what happens below that? Ahh, so many ways to interpret the numbers.

[jifie]

Originally Posted by compSciGuy

I've lived in Austin (went to AISD and Eanes) and worked on a project where I travelled to Lompoc before (supporting NASA launch). When it was mentioned that I went to Berkeley before, I was accused of not being qualified and a token because I was Chinese. I'm sorry, the main businesses around Lompoc are the Air Force Base and the prison, but somebody is seriously trolling ... If you or your friend love California so much, that's great, feel free to enjoy your state. However, don't you have something better to do than to make up Texas BS.

Looks like you have nothing better to do than sit and write something akin to what I saw on the toilet paper after I wiped this morning(always need to check for odd colors, right?). What a waste of time on your part, but I appreciate the sincere concern you have over why I am asking an actual relevant question which I dont even know how anyone could consider trolling.

Knowing what you do about there being a military base in Lompoc, and that I stated I grew up and went to school in Maryland, along with an anecdote from a friend(also military, thats why his kids are in and out of schools in TX) about his experinces with the scooling differential, your first instinct is that I am a CA loving Schwarzenegger-til-I-die west coastie, and not a Military member here out of service to the nation, huh? Good call.

Anyways, for those that are taking my question about my future seriously, I appreciate the input and your thoughts.

[jifie]

Originally Posted by austinnerd

The OP's specific question is probably best answered by those who have a direct point of comparison, but here is something to chew on based on NewsWeek's high school rankings (this is a snippet of an email I sent to someone earlier in the year when the rankings came out):



So based on that measure, it wouldn't seem at first blush that Cali schools are "better". Of course it's impossible to generalize from one persons experience. Even within Austin (let alone TX or the US) you are going to have different experiences in different schools (even on the same campus ala LASA/LBJ). Plus the above is for high schools (it would be pretty impracticable to rank below that level) so the variations in middle/elementary schools is just going to be more significant. Speaking of which, again if he above numbers have any meaning at all, having some variation at the below high school level in the end would appear to "wash out". In other words, even if Cali elementary/middle schools were somehow more "advanced" than Tx, the above rankings would seem to imply that by the time the kiddos got to high school, that any difference doesn't really matter. At least on the high end anyway, maybe the numbers tell us that in the top 10% it doesn't matter, but we just don't see what happens below that? Ahh, so many ways to interpret the numbers.

Just for reference I am not directly trying to compare TX and CA schools. I will not be living here when my child is school age. I am more looking at how Austin stacks up against anywhere else in the U.S., but I do appreciate the info you have given me, thank you.

[woodinvilleguy]

But what about football?

I've been overall impressed with the LISD over Round Rock in general. Round Rock seems to have a few stellar schools and some not so much. LISD seems to be pretty consistent.

[gpurcell]

Originally Posted by capcat

It seems the only state that's really ahead of the pack is Massachusetts. So maybe...go east, young man?

CA doesn't look too bad, Texas doesn't look too good. I'm guessing AISD is fairly representative of the state.

Texas schools are way, way better than California. Go poke around the NAEP statistics to see.