School systems in Texas (Houston, Austin: real estate, house, buying)

[billovn@hotmail.com]

I am thinking about relocating to Houston, Sugar Land area, and heard that it's pretty good despite the hot weather, which I don't mind. However, I am trying to research on school districts to see which ones are best for my kids to got elementary school, middle and eventually high school and college. I don't want my kids to be bullied, beaten up and get intimidated my others. Any suggestions on how I can best research this to find out for example; the ethnicity ratio, the teacher/student ratio, grades and how the schools are rated against each other and in the state? School is super important for me and it’s a determination of where I will live so I would appreciate any help I can get.

[soapboxsallysmom]

I would suggest contacting the various chambers of commerce and then the State Dept of Ed in Austin for the statistics you are looking for. When I lived there in the 80's (Waller county) the schools were dismal. They had no gifted ed and their elem school libraries had no books on space exploration. The one book they had that mentioned anything was a small, well worn book that stated "we might some day go to the moon". It was then I made up my mind we belonged somewhere else. Hopefully Texas has improved. It seems there was always money for football, (including a press box for the stadium and new football shoes for the HS boys), but no budget for new books. Yikes! Sorry, I'm still a bit upset about that experience.

[ikgelionz]

You may be asking for too much. My nephew goes to what is supposed to be a very good school in Missouri City, but he sure is coming back with some bad habits. I don't even let him associate with my sons anymore because of his mean tendencies. It's sad really. Unfortunately, in this world today the only solution that will achieve what you want is home schooling. I will say that Sugar Land should have some of the better schools, much much better than where I went to school: Fondren and Westbury - don't go to either of those no matter what. It's not politically correct to go into the ethnicity breakdown any more and the fact is if you ask a real estate agent about it, they are supposed to avoid your question in order to avoid both liability and an illegal practice called steering. You are correct to exercise an overabundance of caution in researching this. I wish I could help you more and recommend a specific school because you have to know that before buying your house in order to ensure you are properly zoned to it. I do know that Sugar Land is very strict about that. Sorry I can't be more help except to encourage you to continue to be very wary, cautious, and inquisitive. Good luck.

[momof2dfw]

You can find out the ethnic makeup of any school in the country at this website:
http://www.publicschoolsreport.com/


This is the website for the TEA (Texas Education Agency). If you can find all of the rankings for the 2006 TAKS results it will have EVERYTHING broken down according to subgroups (ethnicity) and how each group fared on each test at each grade level at every school in Texas.
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/perfrepor...006/index.html
I found it earlier for one school and it does break it all the way down. A small subgroup can bring an otherwise very good school way down. This happens all the time.

[Mr. Football]

Look at the High Schools and their feeder schools (ie. Middle & Elementary). Look at the Demographics (ie. Poverty level, ethnicity, etc.). Pick a solid area K-12.

We have a major problem in Texas with illegal immigrants and their non-english speaking children who are crowding into our schools, demanding enormous resources from teachers who are already distracted. It's not just a local challenge anymore its an epidemic.

There are a number of great schools, a bunch of good schools, but these represent less than half of the total. Choose wisely.