Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The plain truth is that not everyone can afford to live in the Park Cities. And that's fine- it's not a "right" for everyone to be able to afford to live there.
...
I would say they can't and should focus efforts on the other top school districts in the more affordable areas as to not become a financial burden on their children/family/government if/when their financial "house of cards" comes crashing down.
no, it's not a right but it is better ranked than even the other highly rated schools in the area (except for magnets) so if a parent feels that this is the best choice for his child (and it may not necessarily be so but it is his right to believe so), then it is his right to live on the edge and try to afford the best possible education for that child.
and frankly, i am somewhat disappointed with the AP exam pass rates at highland park. the best public schools in the east coast have pass rates in the 90 percentile range, at least in the mid-80's. so i wouldn't fault a parent for trying to get his kid the best of the best here.
i don't agree with generalized social welfare where entire neighborhoods are depending on it for survival. but if a person, no matter the class, falls through the cracks for some reason, a good society will support him. the said society can't support new children being born into welfare, but it should take care of those who are already here and fall on hard times because life is like that sometimes.
Here's some Dallas area income data (2009 tax returns):
City of Dallas:
5% of households make over $200k
3% make $150-199k
**This makes your $150k HPISD family in the top 8% of Dallas households. I don't know how one could possibly classify this family as anything other than upper income/class...
This puts the $85k family in the "lower middle" earning group in HPISD-> whereas in Dallas as a total, they'd be safely in the top 25%. The $150k family is out of the top 25% in HPISD, falling into the "middle" earnings group in the 40-58th percentile vs top 8% for Dallas as a whole.
I prefer the term "income" vs "class" as class carries a conotation of education, upbringing, lineage, etc - many more factors than income. Someone who is an art critic with a Dalton prep/ Princeton undergrad/ Oxford grad education, work experience in top NYC galleries, and a 1990 Volvo is more likely to be "upper class" (despite a $35k per year gig) than a self-made entrepreneur who went to xyz state school with a 7-figure net worth and a Maserati (he's upper income, not necessarily upper class- think Mark Cuban).
well, i think that definition of "upper class" smacks of well, classism. you are upper class because you are in the upper tier of the income classes. back before industrialization, a person of ignoble birth could not obtain education and refinement. so the nobility was the upper class. but that is no longer the case.
so you could be very well educated wtih or without a college degree but if you make $35K, you are lower middle class. and my parents who never made no more than $50K together would also fall into the same category.
but getting back to income distribution, the percentiles don't matter. as i stated, if you applied the same definition to say, india, you have some pretty poor people in the middle class. maybe people who don't even have sewage and water in their homes.
it is all about the fat left tail. the fat left tail says we can't define these ranges as a simple normal distribution percentages. you have to compensate for the skew.
and it also doesn't matter that a person earning $85K is in the top 25% in the dallas area as a whole. if you are going to say then that family is in the upper middle class, it's a pretty lame place to be. would you want your kid going to a typical dallas isd school if you were upper middle class? you cannot combine these statistical pools that way.
maybe what would help would be to say that the top 5% of the country make $150K or more. then we could follow up by saying that the country has had a history of disregard for education so only a small fraction of the population has traditionally cared about it and so only a few public schools provided good education.
but now the world has changed and more people SEEM to care about education so these good school districts are getting more and more expensive to afford. so if you make $150K and you wish your children to make something similar, you will ignore all the other areas where you would be considered upper middle class and try to situate yourself where you'd do best by your kids.
so, in fact, maybe there should be two social super classes: one aspiring to higher education (the aspiring super class), the other who still disregard it or at least don't care about pedigree (the disregarding super class). then a person can designate himself as belonging to either and the economic classes then should be categorized in each super "class." i am sure the vast majority of people earning $85K or more would categorize themselves in the aspiring super class and would promptly be classified as middle class, maybe lower middle class within it
See this is the problem, by definition of the words upper 85k is upper middle class. What you are in fact saying is. that you don't care about the facts the data, etc. You are creating middle class as a term without definition. You seem to be using the "I can't define it but I know it when I see it, argumeunt"
i don't see any official definition which breaks up the classes into quintiles. do you? that economics book you refer to was written by some person. he has an opinion just like you do and i do. just because it's in print in a text book he published doesn't make it a fact or a definition. the upper class used to be maybe 1/2% of the population before the industrialization. so why the insistence on the quintiles now?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Macbeth2003
If you were in the top 10% of performers at work, I suspect you would be unhappy if that was refereed to as being in the middle, especially if the guy who was in the 25'th% of performers was also referred to as in the middle, and you were lumped together.
i think i see an analogy. when i was in my public high school, i was in the "upper class" academically. then sadly, i went on to higher pastures and i definitely was no longer in the "upper class" of academics but just middle class with possibly a slight tendency towards the upper middle.
and so it is with income. you could delude yourself that you are upper middle class just because you happen to live with a bunch of people who are making less then you do or because you are working with a bunch of people who are performing less than you do. but that doesn't really mean you're anything special. yes, maybe you're in the top 5% nationally. so what? that's not necessarily going to get you an A in a competitive college and it's not going to afford your kids a good education.
so i say this quintiles thing is a broken system and you should go with what sociologists and economists say and accept that only the top 1% of the population is upper class and maybe the top 5% is upper middle if they don't live in HP or SF or NYC, etc.
after all, a bunch of luxembourgers would be considered upper middle here but they are solidly middle there because well, they all make a lot of dang money and it doesn't mean anything.
i don't see any official definition which breaks up the classes into quintiles. do you? that economics book you refer to was written by some person. he has an opinion just like you do and i do. just because it's in print in a text book he published doesn't make it a fact or a definition. the upper class used to be maybe 1/2% of the population before the industrialization. so why the insistence on the quintiles now?
i think i see an analogy. when i was in my public high school, i was in the "upper class" academically. then sadly, i went on to higher pastures and i definitely was no longer in the "upper class" of academics but just middle class with possibly a slight tendency towards the upper middle.
and so it is with income. you could delude yourself that you are upper middle class just because you happen to live with a bunch of people who are making less then you do or because you are working with a bunch of people who are performing less than you do. but that doesn't really mean you're anything special. yes, maybe you're in the top 5% nationally. so what? that's not necessarily going to get you an A in a competitive college and it's not going to afford your kids a good education.
so i say this quintiles thing is a broken system and you should go with what sociologists and economists say and accept that only the top 1% of the population is upper class and maybe the top 5% is upper middle if they don't live in HP or SF or NYC, etc.
after all, a bunch of luxembourgers would be considered upper middle here but they are solidly middle there because well, they all make a lot of dang money and it doesn't mean anything.
and frankly, i am somewhat disappointed with the AP exam pass rates at highland park. the best public schools in the east coast have pass rates in the 90 percentile range, at least in the mid-80's.
The AP pass rates at HPHS are lower because the school does not micromanage who "gets to" take the test.......like other area schools & districts do. In fact, after resarching the other top performing districts, HPHS is the ONLY school I could find where taking the AP exam is MANDATORY if the student took the class. Beyond that, HPHS encourages ALL students with subject interest to take AP exams, even if the course is not offered at the school (ie, AP Art History). The more college credit, the merrier (in HPHS's view). This hurts the school's pass rate compared to other schools/districts who aren't so liberal/open.
Here is the district's policy on AP Exams: Advanced Placement courses are open to any student who displays a demonstrated interest. Objective test data, teacher grades, and recommendations will be considered in the academic guidance process. Students should refer to the Academic Planning Guide or meet with their counselors formore information. Students enrolled in an AP course will be required to take the AP exam for the course, and payment for an AP exam will be required when the student registers for the AP course on which the exam is based. Financial assistance for AP exams may be available through the student’s counselor if requested at the beginning of the course.
Many districts go so far as to "discourage" certain students from taking the AP exams (even after taking the class) and do not offer the option for a student to self-study and then take an AP exam not offered by the school.
As a result of their mandatory/open testing policy, HPHS averages over 5.6 exams taken per gradating senior (Newsweek calculation takes all the schools AP exams and divdes by senior class size to get a metric relative to school size). Highland Park ISD and Austin's Eanes ISD have students taking- BY FAR- the most AP exams on average. HPHS @ 5.6, Austin Westlake @ 4.89, Austin Westwood @ 4.15. They are the only 3 public (non-magnet) high schools out of the 17 TX high schools to make Newsweek's Top 100 national list.
85% of Highland Park's seniors take at least 1 AP exam- that is astonishing! The next closest schools are 54% at Lovejoy (tiny district), and 51% at McKinney HS and Plano West.
By comparison, schools without mandatory AP exams for class takers have fewer tests taken and a higher pass rate. They also have a much smaller % of students taking the AP exams-->
Plano West = 2.6 (85% pass rate) 52% of class taking at least 1 AP exam
Plano Senior = 2.1 (85% pass rate) 44% of class taking AP examPlano East = 1.8 (69% pass rate) 35% of class taking AP exam
PISD policy: "Each AP course concludes with an opportunity for students to take an AP exam for possible college credit. Students are encouraged to take these exams."
Coppell = 2.4 (78% pass rate) 47% of class taking AP exam
CISD policy - not specified whether AP exam is mandatory or not for students enrolled in AP course.
Southlake Carroll = 2.2 (83% pass rate) 40% of class taking AP exam
CISD policy - not specified whether AP exam is mandatory or not for students enrolled in AP course.
Frisco Centennial = 1.7 (71% pass rate) 35% of class taking AP exam
Frisco = 1.4 (70% pass rate) 29% of class taking AP exam
FISD policy- NOT mandatory
Flower Mound Marcus = 1.3 (85% pass rate) 33% of class taking AP exam
LISD policy - Regardless of the number of absences, all students (9th-12th) enrolled in an AP class during the spring term who take the AP test and have at least an 85 average in the class, will be exempt from the semester exam in that class. (NOT mandatory).
Last edited by TurtleCreek80; 09-06-2011 at 03:12 PM..
i don't see any official definition which breaks up the classes into quintiles. do you? that economics book you refer to was written by some person. he has an opinion just like you do and i do. just because it's in print in a text book he published doesn't make it a fact or a definition. the upper class used to be maybe 1/2% of the population before the industrialization. so why the insistence on the quintiles now?
Because the quintiles break it down by even percents, and because it is the standard economic model, which means the data is available. My point was simply that by any definition a six figure income is not middle class, in the USA.
Quote:
Originally Posted by akpack
and so it is with income. you could delude yourself that you are upper middle class just because you happen to live with a bunch of people who are making less then you do or because you are working with a bunch of people who are performing less than you do. but that doesn't really mean you're anything special. yes, maybe you're in the top 5% nationally. so what? that's not necessarily going to get you an A in a competitive college and it's not going to afford your kids a good education.
so i say this quintiles thing is a broken system and you should go with what sociologists and economists say and accept that only the top 1% of the population is upper class and maybe the top 5% is upper middle if they don't live in HP or SF or NYC, etc.
after all, a bunch of luxembourgers would be considered upper middle here but they are solidly middle there because well, they all make a lot of dang money and it doesn't mean anything.
Middle class has always been defined on a country by country basis. To define it by trying to include other nations, or exclude anything but ones immediate neighborhood or peer group renders the term meaningless. The Middle class in the USA, has been pretty well defined. Incidentally no one defines the upper middle class as the upper 5%. You cannot include the word middle in a definition involving the top 5%. Words have meanings and the word middle simply cannot be stretched that far. It requires redefining the word middle. It is as if I decided that I didn't want to call a 101 degree day hot, so I redefined hot as 102+. I could call a 101 degree day a medium temperature day all I wanted, but it wouldn't be so.
The AP pass rates at HPHS are lower because the school does not micromanage who "gets to" take the test.......like other area schools & districts do. In fact, after resarching the other top performing districts, HPHS is the ONLY school I could find where taking the AP exam is MANDATORY if the student took the class. Beyond that, HPHS encourages ALL students with subject interest to take AP exams, even if the course is not offered at the school (ie, AP Art History). The more college credit, the merrier (in HPHS's view). This hurts the school's pass rate compared to other schools/districts who aren't so liberal/open.
Very true, and this is a huge factor for many schools. If you have a school that promotes AP tests - and a district where the cost of them is not an issue - the rate of passing will be lower. I remember a friend who took every AP test known to man, on the grounds that his family could afford it, so why not? I also recently talked to a friend up north who is trying to decide what AP tests her son should take, based upon what percentage chance he has of passing, as the cost will be a hardship for them. This is one of many many many reasons comparing any two schools is so rarely apples to apples.
and it also doesn't matter that a person earning $85K is in the top 25% in the dallas area as a whole. if you are going to say then that family is in the upper middle class, it's a pretty lame place to be. would you want your kid going to a typical dallas isd school if you were upper middle class? you cannot combine these statistical pools that way.
Yes, I absolutely CAN combine statistical pools because the family making $85k has A LOT more choices than just "typical" DISD and "almighty" HPISD......you realize that, right???
All of these schools have housing that falls into the city of Dallas "bucket" where $85k hh is in the top 25% of earners:
Plano West & Plano Senior -> did you know 29% of the Plano ISD top grads from the last 3 years matriculated at Harvard? (much as I adore my alma mater, HPHS cannot claim that).
There are many great homes in Far North Dallas zoned to PISD for 2-3X income ($170-$255k range)!
Richardson ISD (Lake Highlands, Richardson, & Pearce HS's) - Did you know top gradutes routinely go to top 20 schools like Harvard, Yale, UC Berkely, MIT, Wellesley, Rice, etc? Did you know the white students there score better on their SAT's than Coppell, Carroll, and Flower Mound students?
Again, many great family-sized homes in safe pretty neighborhoods within the 2-3X income range. L-Streets of Lake Highlands are great for sub $200k ranch style homes.
DISD magnet schools- Did you know DISD TAG magnet kids take and average of 14 (!!!) AP exams EACH? Did you know TAG magnet's average SAT is 1290 (M+V), nearly 90 points higher than the #2 area school, HPHS? The Science & Engineering Magnet's average SAT is within 10 points of Plano West & Senior.
Again, many great family-sized homes all over safe, truly "middle class" Dallas neighborhoos for 2-3X income.
Top Catholic private schools (St Monica, St Rita, BL, Ursuline, Cistercian, Jesuit)Did you know Cistercian had the highest % of class named National Merit Semi-Finalists @ 26%?? Jesuit (4.8%) had a higher % than HPHS (3.3%)and Ursuline was ranked immediately behind HPHS with 3% of class. Did you know a Catholic education can be had for around $8k (elementary) up to $15k (high school)? That's less than the property taxes on a $650k HPISD home!! And you can spend a fraction of the HPISD home price on a great family home in Dallas, Richardson, Plano, etc since there aren't any residency requirments for private schools.
Middle class has always been defined on a country by country basis. To define it by trying to include other nations, or exclude anything but ones immediate neighborhood or peer group renders the term meaningless.
Agreed. I live in America, in Texas, in Dallas, so that's the pool of my peer group for comparisson's sake. Not in India or Luxenbourg or any other random country this poster has thrown out. Someone living in HPISD can choose to live there - or in DISD or Plano ISD or Coppell ISD or wherever else in the metroplex that is "commutable" to his/her work. Someone living in HPISD does not reasonably have the choice to select a home in Massachusetts, NYC, Luxenbourg or anywhere else around the globe.
The comparative bucket is Dallas/Metroplex - no more, no less.
"Is Highland Park racist?" Amidst the babble of class, quintiles, and the obvious insecurities of some posters, it's time for a reminder of what Highland Park (& UP too) is all about.
Of course it's racist. At least, in the modern, politically correct, essentially anti-white way the word is used. Which, in HP's case, means a self-consciously white community with white values, and a leadership that aims to keep it so.
To understand this, you must go back to the 1950s and recall what Highland Park did to protect its schools from the scourge of integration. (For those ignorant of that episode, I recommend you visit the award-winning thread, "What racial integration and diversity did to Dallasschools." Posted a couple of weeks ago by your's truly. Read the entire first post if possible but if pressed for time or suffering from ADD scroll down to the sub-heading, Highland Park dodges the bullet.)
Back in those more honest days, before the government (in the name of "Civil Rights") essentially outlawed the open expression of racially conscious ("racist" to you sensitive PC souls) views by whites (and only whites), the town fathers of the Park Cities could and did defend their communities in a forthright way. They saw themselves and their communities as white and worth keeping white.
So they did.
Even then, they were vilified by "right-thinking" people, but they had enough pride in themselves, and enough knowledge of what race-mixing does to communities, cities and civilizations, to do what was necessary. For examples of this, they knew what was happening in the Bronx, what was happening in parts of St. Louis and Chicago and New York and (above all) Detroit, and what had happened, long ago, in the Roman Empire.
Now, in the early 21st century, we have a completely different situation. Anyone - private citizen, public personality, government leader - who lets slip the slightest indication of a belief in racial differences, and that these differences (in intelligence, in behavior) matter, and that maybe people should be allowed to live amongst people like themselves if that's what they want, is flayed alive, guillotined, then drawn and quartered (and maybe burnt to ash if the media doesn't get diverted by another story).
Oh wait a minute. I didn't mean anyone...I meant any white person.(Do I repeat myself? Well, it needs repeating.) Black folks and others can talk about race differences all they want (i.e., blaming whitey as the source of all their problems) and get away with it.
So the job of maintaining the Park Cities as essentially white communities cannot be done in the open anymore.
But it's still being done.
It's true that there are people in Highland Park who claim not to care one whit about race, that race doesn't matter, and mouth all the other modern PC claptrap we hear every day. (In defiance of the enormous mountain of evidence - scientific, sociological, historical - to the contrary.)
Some of them are sincere. Some are being...well....like Plano people, who have a history of hypocrisy when it comes to saying one thing and doing another about race.
And it's true that, very rich neighborhood that it is, and times having changed, the Park Cities have attracted a number of louche characters, metrosexuals, and other decay products of a declining society, all of whom proudly proclaim their commitment to Equality and Diversity in All Things (EDIAT), as long as you drive a sleek enough car, wear up-to-date clothes, and all the rest.
Yes, true.
But it's also true that most of the white people in the Park Cities know the score on race, and live there in large measure because of that. Sure, they won't tell you that (unless you are a trusted friend). And yes, they will tolerate the presence of a few well-heeled, well-behaved minorities (especially non-black minorities)*** in their neighborhood, because the federal government will destroy them if they don't.
But toleration is not approval. And the people of the Park Cities have found ways in the past, and will find ways in the future - all kinds of subtle, underground, passive-aggressive ways, to defend their community.
May they enjoy success and good fortune in this endeavor.
And that, my friends (and others), is what Highland Park is all about.
***To those who think non-black minorities are a new thing in Park Cities: not at all. At least since the 1950s, Mexican-American professionals have lived there and sent their kids to HPISD. Ditto Asians. The numbers are larger now, but some minorities have been in the Park Cities for many decades. However, they always accepted the requirement to assimilate into the larger, dominant, white neighborhood around them.
Last edited by dubeaux; 09-06-2011 at 05:50 PM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Time for a reality check
