conway schools

[Stormcrow73]

Originally Posted by Aporkalypse

I don't live in Conway, so I consider myself neutral.

These rankings, as is typical, are very poor indicators of quality. Conway has some of the best public schools in Arkansas, easily a top ten school district. St Joseph's wouldn't offer an upgrade and other nearby schools like Vilonia, Mayflower, and Greenbrier would be downgrades. As typical suburban schools, there is more emphasis on a good general education and less on AP classes, similar to what you'll also find in most NWA schools and other popular LR suburbs with "good schools" - Bryant and Cabot.

I agree with Apork on this, Greatschools is NOT a good indicator of real value in a school. That being said, it's no secret that the Conway school system has far too many students and not enough funding to keep up in either in infrastructure or quality of classes. The town has doubled in size in like only 10 years so it shouldn't surprise anyone. As for theatre arts, I know one of the teachers in that area at Conway HS and he goes out of his way to do things for his students. While the overall funding level for that subject area may not be great, the school at least has someone working hard. To the best of my knowledge there is no community theatre in Conway proper but there is in Little Rock.

[strumpeace]

To be quite honest, if you want to live in Central Arkansas and have your child attend a public school, I don't think you're going to find anything better than Conway High School. (Central in LR may be better, but it has a whole other set of issues.) It's not perfect, and if you compare it nationally, it's not a great school at all. For Arkansas (where our schools are admittedly lacking), though, it's a very good school. It performs as well as any of the public high schools in the state. There are some private schools in the metro area (Episcopal Collegiate, Pulaski Academy, etc.) that are definitely better (as far as advanced offerings, college scholarships, etc.) than Conway High. But those are costly private schools -- not public schools.

As has already been mentioned, Conway has experienced exponential growth in the last 10-15 years. Because of that growth, the school district has spent an extraordinary amount of money to build new elementary schools, intermediate schools, and a middle school. I think that as our growth subsides (it appears to be slowing now), the school district will be able to focus more on improving existing schools, rather than building new schools. Of course, imo, one of the things they will need to do to improve Conway High is construct a new high school.

Best wishes on finding something that fits you child.

[Stormcrow73]

Originally Posted by strumpeace

To be quite honest, if you want to live in Central Arkansas and have your child attend a public school, I don't think you're going to find anything better than Conway High School. (Central in LR may be better, but it has a whole other set of issues.) It's not perfect, and if you compare it nationally, it's not a great school at all. For Arkansas (where our schools are admittedly lacking), though, it's a very good school. It performs as well as any of the public high schools in the state. There are some private schools in the metro area (Episcopal Collegiate, Pulaski Academy, etc.) that are definitely better (as far as advanced offerings, college scholarships, etc.) than Conway High. But those are costly private schools -- not public schools.

As has already been mentioned, Conway has experienced exponential growth in the last 10-15 years. Because of that growth, the school district has spent an extraordinary amount of money to build new elementary schools, intermediate schools, and a middle school. I think that as our growth subsides (it appears to be slowing now), the school district will be able to focus more on improving existing schools, rather than building new schools. Of course, imo, one of the things they will need to do to improve Conway High is construct a new high school.

Best wishes on finding something that fits you child.

I'd put several of our Central AR schools toe to toe with the "best" in the country. I've seen first hand the curriculums and quality of education at a couple of the "best" school districts on the east coast and several of our's here measure up and exceed those. At least our schools aren't teaching the test or selectively removing certain sets of students from the testing pool to falsely increase our test scores and ratings like those on Greatschools!! Let me tell you straight up that at least several Montgomery County, Maryland schools instruct certain sets of students to be absent on MSA test day....

[macgirl]

Thank you all for your insight.