Teacher looking for good school districts... (Houston: suburbs, teachers, area)

[Guerilla]

Stratford HS is a great high school. It is diverse, too. Many students from other districts try to get into it.

[crbcrbrgv]

Hands down the best district for you to work for in your situation would be Alief I.S.D. If you pass the TOPT (Spanish oral proficiency test) starting pay is almost 50k. Alief is a very teacher friendly district. Don't let the Alief bashers come on here and scare you off. Katy is great....if you like helicopter parents.

[Mom2Feebs]

Originally Posted by crbcrbrgv

Hands down the best district for you to work for in your situation would be Alief I.S.D. If you pass the TOPT (Spanish oral proficiency test) starting pay is almost 50k. Alief is a very teacher friendly district. Don't let the Alief bashers come on here and scare you off. Katy is great....if you like helicopter parents.

Okay, where are the Alief bashers? I haven't seen one person in this thread bash AISD at all...but I wonder how you can balk at people who bash Alief and then turn around and bash Katy?

[Mr. Football]

Helicopter Parents?

[missclark]

Thanks,everyone. I have seen a few negative comments about Alief in some other threads (but have also heard positive about it as well...same with Aldine). As someone who has taught high school for 13 years, 7 of those in one of the top performing schools in Atlanta, I totally understand what you mean by "helicopter" parents. These are the ones who email me 2 and 3 times a week..."Why does my child have a 90?" (instead of the 99 they want them to have), wanting you to inform them of every single homework assignment, test, quiz, etc. (when the student is in the 10th grade and is perfectly capable of writing it down in an agenda themselves). No worries...over the years I have developed strategies for dealing with parents...from non-involved to over-involved ones. The bottom line is that parents like to be informed, and if you work with parents and their children early on to help their students develop strategies to be more self-sufficient, you'd be surprised how relieved some of these parents are to take time off from their helicopter duties!!

It can be one of the hassles of working in a higher socio-economic area, but I can handle it.

INTERESTING to hear about the Spanish proficiency test. I have no idea how I'd score...from being here in Ecuador 3 years my Spanish is pretty fluent, but nowhere near perfect (lots of vocabulary left to learn...a lot of work to perfect all of the verb tenses...but that is something I think it takes years of just practice, studying, and exposing oneself to the language to master). I will check into that. I do plan on continuing to study Spanish once I get there, so maybe it will be just a matter of a year or so more of classes, plus continuing to make conversation with native Spanish speakers as often as possible.

Great info, everybody. Thanks so much!!

[Texas Mack]

While HISD does in fact have its problems, it does have some quality schools. You might want to research specfic schools within HISD to see how they're performing. That aside, I'll agree that there are other school districts in the area that might be more appealing to you overall.

[crbcrbrgv]

Originally Posted by Mom2Feebs

Okay, where are the Alief bashers? I haven't seen one person in this thread bash AISD at all...but I wonder how you can balk at people who bash Alief and then turn around and bash Katy?

Geez, all I said is they have helicopter parents. The teachers I know who teach there all say the same thing.

[Mom2Feebs]

Originally Posted by crbcrbrgv

Geez, all I said is they have helicopter parents. The teachers I know who teach there all say the same thing.

You said it like it's a bad thing. That's how I read it, anyway.

[Guerilla]

You could live and find a nice house (great house actually) in Katy, but then work in Alief I.S.D. Alief would be great for you.

[carolineb]

Someone posted researching demographics on the great schools website but you can also go directly to the tea website and print out the demographics provided by the schools for the students and teachers for the past several years.