Flower Mound or Lakewood??

[ClarenceBodiker]

Originally Posted by 1928

If you want a gigantic sterile suburban school where everyone is just alike virtually all white and no disadvantaged or non English-speaking kids then I guess it's easy. Suburbanites love the simple solution as they don't have much time before the next relo.

WalMart easy Olive Garden easy Marcus easy

This is a pretty typical post from you, 1928. Some "facts" you presented there. Sounds more like you're the one attacking people in your typical crusade against anywhere not inner-city Dallas.

[SMS_Parent]

My friends who graduated from Woodrow & Hillcrest & White all say they were suprised by how many fellow grads had unfamiliar faces at graduation.

This is really sad given the relatively small size of the graduating classes at these schools and belies the diversity that is supposed to be one of the primary advantages of attending a DISD school. If you are sitting in all your classes with kids like you and your extracurricular activities are filled with the rich kids from your wealthy nearby neighborhood, what moral advantage do you really have over the families in which the parents have chosen to send their children to schools that were expressly created to avoid integration -- and which have now grown beyond that initial unsavory mission?

I've mentioned this before, but as a taxpayer in the DISD it really bothers me that the DISD administration is creating exclusive "academies" that cater to the high achieving wealthy kids -- while sheltering them from their less advantaged classmates -- and failing to adequately address the much more pressing needs of the students who have the dual challenges of poverty and limited English proficiency to overcome. The DISD publishes annual scorecards that tell a revealing story about the overall level of achievement at these schools -- see especially the disturbing numbers of students classified as "college ready." While I agree that the DISD offers lots of opportunities for kids like mine, I am not sure that every parent in even the best of the DISD high schools could feel the same assurance. Education offers the best opportunity most of these students will ever have of escaping generational poverty. Yet the overwhelming advantages of the educational opportunities in the DISD seem to flow to those who need a leg up the least.
http://www.dallasisd.org/scorecards/pdfcards/021E_WHITE.pdf (broken link)
http://www.dallasisd.org/scorecards/pdfcards/022E_WILSON.pdf (broken link)
http://www.dallasisd.org/scorecards/pdfcards/006E_HILLCREST.pdf (broken link)

[dallas90210]

In the end, DISD sucks compared the suburbs. It's a fact.

[TXNGL]

Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80

This is the DISD "school within a school" phenomenon. The experience of a high-achieving, driven, smart kid in Honors/AP/IB classes will have an entirely different educational experience than the "average"/"below average"/future drop out kids. From what I have seen, DISD teachers and admins will bend over backwards for kids with smarts/potential. There are some exceptional college professor quality teachers in the AP classes at Woodrwo, White, and even Hillcrest and TJ. I am less familiar with the south Dallas/Oak Cliff schools like Sunset and Lincoln, but I bet it's a similar story.

Your kids aren't likely to have any classes with kids who end up dropping out of high school if they're taking a Honors/AP/IB load.

FYI for all- read up on a DISD program called Education is Freedom. A woman who had been a VP at Texas Instruments started it as an on-campus high school program for high potential college-bound kids who don't get much support at home because parents either don't care or don't understand the college application process. Over 2,000 of the districts 14,000 juniors and seniors signed up. It's voluntary and run as a not-for-proft so zero DISD funds go to the initiative. There is a full time counselor at about 10 (I think?) DISD high schools and volunteers from Junior League and other organizations volunteer weekly with the students- helping edit essays, filling out college applications and FAFSA forms, making sure they're registered for SAT's, AP exams, etc....basically everything one would expect parents to do. The results
get better every year: last year, 98% of EIF kids were accepted to a college and 98% of those kids enrolled. The goal is to have a presence on every DISD high school's campus and to have all students enrolling.....minus the kids who already have hovercraft parents at home! There are great things happening in DISD....give it time!

That is great! I had not heard of that program. Maybe my post wasn't clear (or maybe you weren't addressing me), but my child is in DISD and I know there are wonderful things happening there.

[TXNGL]

Originally Posted by getmeoutofhere

The teachers and principals should be focused on the potential drop-outs, not the honors kid.

That hardly seems fair to the average and above average kids. They can focus on all of them, but without support outside of school then these kids don't have much of a chance. In my daughter's ELEMENTARY school, she had classmates who were often absent because they were babysitting younger siblings. That sounds crazy to me, but then I have more than a 3rd grade education, which was about the education level of some of the parents.

[getmeoutofhere]

Originally Posted by TXNGL

That hardly seems fair to the average and above average kids. They can focus on all of them, but without support outside of school then these kids don't have much of a chance. In my daughter's ELEMENTARY school, she had classmates who were often absent because they were babysitting younger siblings. That sounds crazy to me, but then I have more than a 3rd grade education, which was about the education level of some of the parents.

Average and above average kids will get attention no matter what. Typically, they are going to succeed anyway.

If you don't work with those other kids from the start, then you never break that cycle. They drop out and become like their parents, and it just keeps going.

[TXNGL]

Originally Posted by getmeoutofhere

Average and above average kids will get attention no matter what. Typically, they are going to succeed anyway.

If you don't work with those other kids from the start, then you never break that cycle. They drop out and become like their parents, and it just keeps going.

I am all for breaking the cycle, I love it when I hear about these kids breaking out of that cycle, but I think there is only so much the schools can do when you have a kid who is being told by his parents to drop out and get a job, for example. It's not as if the principals and teachers want these drop out numbers since it affects their rankings and their funding.

[Lakewooder]

Originally Posted by SMS_Parent

I've mentioned this before, but as a taxpayer in the DISD it really bothers me that the DISD administration is creating exclusive "academies" that cater to the high achieving wealthy kids

Could you explain what you mean and/or name some of these "academies"? Thanks.

[SMS_Parent]

Originally Posted by Lakewooder

Could you explain what you mean and/or name some of these "academies"? Thanks.

I am talking about the "school within a school" feeling that Turtle Creek describes in an earlier post. Talk to any well to do parent at White or Hillcrest for more than a few minutes and they will tell you about their child's private school like experience at those schools and say something along the lines of "The AP students take all their classes together. They rarely if ever mingle with the 'regular' students" -- as if this is some sort of selling point for the school. As TC points out, these students are beloved by their teachers, are typically taught by "college level teachers," are given access to special ACT/SAT test prep programs (remember the scandal with Hinojosa's son getting access to a Title I SAT prep program?), and feted for their accomplishments.

Meanwhile, when you look at the college readiness statistics for those schools, you see that only 11% (Hillcrest) and 19% (White) of the students -- essentially 20 to 40 students in the whole graduating class -- basically the same number of kids who are taking a full load of AP classes -- meet the SAT/ACT college readiness standard. By the DISD's own definition the vast majority of students at Hillcrest and White aren't ready to do college level work upon graduation from some of the very best non-magnet schools the DISD has to offer.

This wouldn't necessarily be a problem except that roughly 60% of the students at these schools do go to some sort of college -- 40% or more without having the advantage of the school within a school experience -- and statistics show that the students who need remediation prior to attempting college level work are the among the least likely to graduate.

This problem is compounded by the fact that public schools currently operate under the fiction that everyone is going to college and that college is the best place for every student. The net result is that the students who are most at risk of remaining in poverty are forced onto a college preparatory track, but because they haven't had the advantages that the full A/P kids have had -- sometimes due to lack of parental expectations or participation in their education, but sometimes due to limited English proficiency or simply the need to devote all possible energy to sustaining a family -- they neither get the "great teachers" to prepare them for a college experience nor are they offered meaningful work force training that might allow them to enjoy a better life than their parents albeit without a college degree.

I guess what I am trying to convey is that a taxpayer, I don't judge the DISD by the Ivy League admissions that the top students end up garnering and I am not terribly impressed by the addition of programs that serve those students. Those students would do well regardless of where they went to school.

Of course this rant about the allocation of educational resources and educational philosophy is all somewhat off topic for this thread, which is devoted to the question whether Lakewood or Flower Mound is a better choice for OP's housing hunt. Flower Mound has kids who face the sort of challenges that the majority of the kids in the DISD face, but not in nearly the same numbers -- so it isn't fair for the Flower Mound supporters to throw around the Flower Mound statistics in comparison to Woodrow and tout the superiority of Flower Mound on that basis. Those statistics simply show that kids who have had every advantage generally do well -- just as the advantaged kids in the DISD do well.