School ratings over years? (Austin, Round Rock: real estate, new home, established neighborhood)

[avanika27]

I have been a silent reader all through (not that i do not want to help people, but I am as such new to this place - so my knowledge is limited on the topics posted here).

So coming back to my question - We are looking to buy a house and were looking at Paloma Lake and Leander as one of our few options. Everything else is in good school zones (and newer communities) in Round Rock and Cedar Park is way above our budget (budget is $400k).

Now when it comes to Paloma Lake and Leander, schools are not that great in comparison with Cedar Park/RR. We don't have kids yet though.

It would be at least 5 plus years for our kids to even go to elementary. How do school rankings change over years here? For example an 8 ranked school in Leander ISD can become 10 in next couple of years?
I don't want to leave out those areas just because the school rating right now is not what we are looking for.

Any light on how the school ratings in general flow over years would be great!

Thanks,
Avanika

[mesmer]

What ratings are you looking at? Official TEA ratings or unofficial online ratings?

[Nacho_Friend]

Schooldigger

[avanika27]

Originally Posted by mesmer

What ratings are you looking at? Official TEA ratings or unofficial online ratings?

I was looking at Great School ratings, so it would be unofficial.

[avanika27]

Originally Posted by Nacho_Friend

Schooldigger

Thanks, this was useful. So are these official rankings?

[Nacho_Friend]

No but they're pegged to official data like STAAR and TAKS scores. It is directionally correct. Whether a school is #45 or #57 out of 4179 elementary schools is probably up for debate. At that point it is probably moot.

[mark311]

Originally Posted by avanika27

So coming back to my question - We are looking to buy a house and were looking at Paloma Lake and Leander as one of our few options. Everything else is in good school zones (and newer communities) in Round Rock and Cedar Park is way above our budget (budget is $400k).

Now when it comes to Paloma Lake and Leander, schools are not that great in comparison with Cedar Park/RR. We don't have kids yet though.

So I doubt that a school rated an 8 will eventually end up being a 10 on Great Schools, but an 8 rated Elementary on there is already a good school anyway. I assume that when you say newer communities that you mean neighborhoods that are still building new homes because $400k will still get you a nice place in a newer community all over Cedar Park and Round Rock, maybe just not a brand new build.

I had the exact same thoughts as you when we purchased our first home here as we didn't have kids yet, but we still went for what we thought was a good place to raise kids. I regret that we didn't buy a place at that time that was more suited for us without kids and also more desirable to everyone as it would have been a much wiser investment. Chances are in 6 plus years when your kids start attending public schools, you'll want to be in a different neighborhood anyway. 6 years is a long time. My best advice is to buy a place close to where you work that has the greatest potential to retain or grow in value.

With that said, I think a comparably priced new home build in Leander probably has better potential than Paloma Lake as long as it isn't too far out there and close to a lot of the new growth (ie. near Cedar Park Center). But, I wouldn't buy either one if I worked in Central Austin for example if I didn't have kids yet.

[austinnerd]

Originally Posted by avanika27

It would be at least 5 plus years for our kids to even go to elementary. How do school rankings change over years here? For example an 8 ranked school in Leander ISD can become 10 in next couple of years?
I don't want to leave out those areas just because the school rating right now is not what we are looking for.

Any light on how the school ratings in general flow over years would be great!

Some points to consider (and I'll try not to get too soap boxy)

- First, are you asking because you're concerned about resale or are you thinking about your (future) kids in particular? This makes a big difference because if it's for yourself, it's a bit trickier. The problem with rankings is that they only tell a very small part of the story for a school. As a made up example, let's say you have school A, they get a 9 rank and it's known to be a very aggressively academic environment and the only real negatives mentioned is that they don't cater very well to kids who don't flourish in a traditional classroom environment. Now if your kid happens to fall into the latter category, then that high falutin 9 doesn't do much for you. Contrast this with a school that scores a 7 where there are lots of complaints about the classes catering too much to the "slower" kids and the teachers spending too much time with them. Again, that school might be perfect for your particular kid despite the numerically lower ranking. If it's more for resale then it's simple, pick the higher number, most people aren't savvy enough to know any better.

- As for trends, one thing to observe is the growth pattern vs existing campus'. While it's not likely that you will see seismic shifts in scores over a period of <5 years, one event that could (and actually has occurred) cause something like that to occur is if a new school is created and it ends up bifurcating the existing student body among socioeconomic/performance lines. In other words, you have the existing school that serves a wide area with a variety of students. A new school opens to relieve overcrowding at the the old school but the neighborhood layout is such that far more of the higher achieving kids end up going to the new school and that will suddenly have a performance impact on the old school. So the lesson here is, if it's a concerned, steer towards schools that have established neighborhoods. Or, if you do want to go into an area that has lots of room for additional development, go with the old real estate standby of getting the least expensive house in an expensive neighborhood vs the most expensive house in a less expensive neighborhood even if you have to compromise on the house.

- mark311 has good advice about perhaps jumping the gun a bit. If you compromise now to pursue some vague notion of "better" schools for an event that may be many years off, you might find yourself being very unhappy. The Austin metro area is seeing enough overall growth (so far) that if you simply made a wise choice about where to live based on all the usual factors (i.e. not overloading the importance of the school), then you should still see good returns thus making the choice to defer your long term home choice (once you've had your kid(s) and have a better feel for what you want and what the kids need) a fiscally reasonable one.