If Dekalb County schools are so bad . . . (Atlanta, Roswell: apartments, foreclosures)

[cautious-mom]

then why has Newsweek magazine put Lakeside High School near the top of its list of best public high schools in the country? I looked at the methodology and it seemed okay to me.

Only one other Atlanta area school did better, one in Marietta County I believe.

[aries4118]

Originally Posted by cautious-mom

then why has Newsweek magazine put Lakeside High School near the top of its list of best public high schools in the country? I looked at the methodology and it seemed okay to me.

Only one other Atlanta area school did better, one in Marietta County I believe.

You can't judge an individual school based on the system that it is in. Every school system has great schools and not-so-great schools.

[lastminutemom]

Aries is right...

(First, the Newsweek list is a little wacky.) Avondale High School is in the top 1000 and just look at its' SAT average 2007-Math --407 2007 Critical Reading (use to be Verbal) --413 -- for a grand total of 820. But because they now offer IB and are a small school, they somehow cracked the top 1000. ( Schools are ranked by the number of Advanced Placement, Intl. Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in 2007 divided by the number of graduating seniors. Whether the students pass the tests are not is irrelevant.) Last year, some of the DeKalb schools that have implemented IB had fewer than 10 percent of students pass.

Second, Lakeside has been having internal issues that actually have little to do with DeKalb County. Some of the issues are complex, dealing with alumni and the parents of alumni meddling, others are racial/socio-economic in nature and others are questions about whether all students needs are met, or just those that are at the top.

Can your high performing student get a good education at Lakeside or many other DEkalb high schools? Probably. Would they have more opportunities (ie in the arts, foreign languages, electives) at the Fulton schools? Most likely.

Most North Fulton schools are either new or renovated. They have wonderful facilities for the visual and performing arts. Most DeKalb schools (except the new ones) have none.

The other problem is going to be a big one in the years coming. Until a few years ago, DeKalb and City of Atlanta were the highest paying systems. This year, DeKalb has slipped to the middle of the pack in Metro Atlanta and was hardly able to afford to give the step increase (the annual very small raise) that teachers normally get. At the same time, Fulton teachers got a nearly 6 percent raise. Fulton's tax base is increasing, DeKalb's may be shrinking. Eventually, this will matter-- the best teachers will end up elsewhere.

[atlantamoi]

Originally Posted by lastminutemom

Fulton's tax base is increasing, DeKalb's may be shrinking.

Why is this? Each year I keep hearing about more people moving back closer to Atlanta and Dekalb is certainly a big chunk of that.

[netdragon]

Originally Posted by cautious-mom

Only one other Atlanta area school did better, one in Marietta County I believe.

You mean Marietta in Cobb County...

[lastminutemom]

Originally Posted by atlantamoi

Why is this? Each year I keep hearing about more people moving back closer to Atlanta and Dekalb is certainly a big chunk of that.

I think it is about square mileage. We have high end (by that I mean say home values over $500,000) areas that are newish in Brookhaven area, Emory-Lavista area, Dunwoody and Chambleeish. There are handful of older areas in S. DeKalb that have this valuation. Fulton has far more homes priced highly.

In addition, you can see this by Perimeter Mall by the way, DeKalb hasn't had much high end commercial development except for housing (ie apartments, some condos) for a lot of years. By Perimeter, there is a tremendous amount of Class A office space going in (the most lucrative from a property tax stand point) on the FULTON side. On the DeKalb side, mostly apartments and condos. Apartments depreciate very quickly.

The median house value in DeKalb in 2005 (as found on city-data.com) was 187,200. In Fulton, it was 264.143, in Cobb it was 195,700.

The average home price in Roswell for example was 260,000 and the average home price in St. Mountain was 132,000. (Decatur was about 300,000 but because they have their own school sytem, DeKalb schools don't get that money.)

S. DeKalb is being hit hard by a huge wave of foreclosures which will impact property values for a long time. It will be years before the area recovers.

[j0ja]

If you want more details on individual schools in DeKalb or anywhere for that matter, check out greatschools.net - I cannot speak much on DeKalb schools within the last 10 years, other than there are pockets of well performing schools here and there.

Why is this? Each year I keep hearing about more people moving back closer to Atlanta and Dekalb is certainly a big chunk of that.

IMHO, I believe the people moving closer back in-town are singles and married couples with no children who have this flexibility to move back in-town. Very few people with school-aged children do so unless they have a plan for private schools, or some of the select intown schools that have a better reputation academically. However, usually then the housing values for those highly-sought school areas hold up which explains, in large part, the high prices of homes around the Lakeside / Druid Hills area.

[atlantamoi]

Thanks for crunching the numbers. Makes sense.

[Cere]

The Newsweek Data is misleading. The simple mathematical formula they use is this: Take the number of seniors and divide that number into the number of students taking AP courses and then rank them. Lakeside knows understands this methodology and caters to it. By that I mean, they encourage students to take AP courses beginning as sophomores. (Newsweek doesn't insist that you pass the course.) Lakeside has a huge dropout problem, so there are usually many more freshmen and sophomores than seniors. For example, right now they have over 600 freshmen and barely 300 seniors. No one ever has to account for the usual 200+ students who disappear before making it through to graduation, because Newsweek only tracks the AP data. That's it. Never trust "stats" - they can be maniuplated to prove any point. Visit a school you're interested in and visualize your student there. It requires more legwork to choose a school system than simply looking at data, IMO.