Is Stephenson High School Worse School In Metro ATL? (Atlanta: crime, neighborhoods)

[EastATLGuy]

I don't know how Stephenson High School (Dekalb County)has become one of the worst schools in the state and it is located in a good neighborhood(Stn.Mtn), but AJC online put up discpline and education report cards up on the school last summer and they had the lowest score out of all the ATL City and Metro High Schools. I visited the school once before and students dress and act like they are in the hood I was kind of nervous about being there. I think the county should do something about this. Do you?

[lastminutemom]

Stephenson isn't the worst, by any stretch, but it is one of the ones that should be doing far better than it is. (Check Mcnair and Avondales High if you want to see worse -- but those schools have students from really crummy neighborhoods.)

Within the last year, someone sponsored a meeting at Stonecrest Mall about the state of the African-American community in the country, but specifically DeKalb. The panel was outstanding and one of the out of state speakers pointed out that DeKalb is one of the most affluent counties for blacks, but has a high school drop out rate of about 50 percent. He wondered how this could be.

I wonder too..

[JayRockTeam]

The academic performance at Stephenson could certainly stand improvement. Personally, I think there is a lack of discipline at the administrative level. I don't believe in zero tolerance, but there certainly needs to be a low tolerance for inappropriate dress, and behavior.

.

[tjonz]

My puppy wont attend Stephenson High. I think the problems lie with the administration, You need to take back the school,make the parents and students responsible. Call the parents to come get their child if there is a problem, let them know who is running things.
stop the ISS and call the parents. Take charge of the school and stop letting the students ! they are little gansta wannabees.

[tjonz]

and of course the negative publicity of the teacher/ student fight did not help. kids are out of control and the administration stand around and look dumb.

[DeaconJ]

If Stephenson had the lowest discipline score in Dekalb County, doesn't that translate to the most disciplinary actions taken by staff? I'm not exactly sure how this "discipline report card" was compiled, but it would have to be from statistics reported by each school...and they can't very well report actions NOT taken by staff. So it sounds like the school is taking a lot of action but it isn't helping the situation.

[atlantaATL]

they have a really good band though i believe there going to paris in 2010 i heard the announcement at this pass high school battle of the bands

[thedudewiththeplan]

Stephenson is not nearly the worst. Crime High School in Atlanta is much worse and the former Carver High School in Atlanta had one of the worst reputations in the country. North Clayton High School and most all of the other schools in Clayton County are also way up there.

[DeaconJ]

Originally Posted by thedudewiththeplan

Stephenson is not nearly the worst. Crime High School in Atlanta is much worse and the former Carver High School in Atlanta had one of the worst reputations in the country. North Clayton High School and most all of the other schools in Clayton County are also way up there.

Crime High School? I wanna send my kids there!

[GF72]

for whatever reason, affluence doesn't seem to improve test scores among blacks unless they are a minority. Schools in South Cobb and East Dekalb should be much better but they aren't. These aren't ghetto areas. I made a post on this phenomenon before due to something someone said, so I did some research out of curiosity. Here's the post I made:

Originally Posted by GF72

This is an interesting question that I haven't really thought about (SAT scores for blacks in different socioeconomic situations), so I decided to do some research. Here's a comparison of SAT scores for blacks in Sandtown/Cascade vs. Decatur, plus more areas for some perspective. Listed from highest black population to lowest, with avg. household income for socioeconomic comparison:

GA State SAT average for blacks: 852/1600
GA State SAT average for all: 941/1600
GA State average household income: $63,000

Westlake High (97% black)
SAT average for blacks - 890/1600
SAT average for school - 884/1600
Avg. Household Income: $53,000

Decatur High (48% black)
SAT average for blacks - 867/1600
SAT average for school - 1064/1600
Avg. Household Income - $67,000

North Cobb High (30% black)
SAT average for blacks - 918/1600
SAT average for school - 970/1600
Avg. Household Income - $70,000

Lakeside High (29% black)
SAT average for blacks - 901/1600
SAT average for school - 1069/1600
Avg. Household Income - $96,000

Roswell High (15% black)
SAT average for blacks - 984/1600
SAT average for school - 1118/1600
Avg. Household Income - $115,000

Star's Mill High (8% black)
SAT average for blacks - 1016/1600
SAT average for school - 1084/1600
Avg. Household Income - $86,000

Walton High (4% black)
SAT average for blacks - 956/1600
SAT average for school - 1142/1600
Avg. Household Income - $130,000

These results are very interesting. The three schools with the highest black SAT scores are also the three with the lowest black population. On the other hand, the one school with almost 100% black population, had better black SAT scores than the school with about 50% blacks, but worse than all the other schools.

North Cobb and Lakeside have the same black population percentage, but North Cobb blacks outperformed Lakeside blacks, despite being a much poorer area.

Westlake, North Cobb, and Star's Mill all had small gaps between black performance and total school performance, and these schools cover a wide range in terms of both black percentage and area economics.

Lakeside and Roswell had mid-sized gaps between black scores and overall scores, and both of these are high income areas. Lakeside has twice the black percentage, but Roswell blacks outperformed them (but so did the school overall).

Decatur and Walton both had whopping 200 point differences between black scores and total scores, yet these schools have nothing in common. Decatur has high black percentage, Walton has low black percentage, and average income in the Walton area is double. As a result of the massive gap, Decatur had the poorest black performance, but Walton's black population still had the third highest performance.

Based on this info, the trends are difficult to figure out.

I already mentioned North Cobb and Lakeside have the same black percentage. North Cobb beats Lakeside for black scores, but Lakeside beats North Cobb for overall scores. Lakeside area is significantly higher income. So it seems in this case, the higher income in the Lakeside area boosts non-black scores, but not black scores.

But then we have Decatur, which also loses to North Cobb for black scores and beats it in overall scores, yet Decatur is similar to North Cobb for area income. In this case non-blacks aren't being boosted by income, so most likely it's the "Emory effect." This effect doesn't seem to help the black population at all, since Decatur has the lowest black scores (likely due to the poor black neighborhoods). This really comes into play if we go back to my previous point about Decatur and Walton having massive 200 point gaps between blacks and the overall population for scores. Well, Walton's black to white gap is still 200 points, but Decatur's black to white gap is a gargantuan 300 points.

Roswell and Walton are the two highest income areas, and both have high black scores, but even higher non-black scores. So in these areas, high income seems to have boosted black scores, but not enough to keep up with non-black scores.

And then there's Star's Mill, which has an avg. income square in the middle of the group, a low black percentage, the highest black scores, and blacks here have narrowed the gap significantly, performing almost as good as everyone else.

I'll also note that every single school beat the state average for blacks, every school but Westlake beat the state average for everyone, and every school but Westlake was higher than the state average for household income.

So it seems that income doesn't start boosting black scores until it gets pretty high. Aside from Star's Mill, the highest black performance were in the two highest income areas. On the other end, the lowest black performance was in the two lowest income areas.

So why did Star's Mill do so well for blacks? It's complicated, but I have a theory. Star's Mill area income is high, but not so high that Whites and Asians skyrocket ahead, like Roswell and Walton. But wait, then why did Star's Mill outperform Lakeside on all counts, despite Lakeside having a much higher area income? This seems to be because of Lakeside's much larger black percentage - once black percentage gets low (15% or less), black scores really shoot up, and at very high black percentages, black scores are low. At middle level black percentages (around 30%), black performance seems unaffected by income, whereas non-black performance is dependent on income (hence, Lakeside/North Cobb differences).

Hm... I'm putting way too much thought into this. But it's interesting stuff.

Not nearly as straightforward as SAT trends for whites (tied to income) or Asians (always good, except in very poor areas).

One more note. Decatur is the most diverse high school, but has the biggest gap between black and white performance. Lakeside has the highest black population (97%) and has... no gap in black and white performance, but it is the worst overall performing school and second worst for blacks. Star's Mill has the highest white population (85%), and it has the best black performance with a small gap in white to black performance.

Though this old post doesn't examine something important, which is parent's educational level. There's is pretty much no bigger indicator of a child's performance in school than parent's education level. I don't have stats on this though, and I don't feel like looking....