Best School District's in Houston Area??? (Dallas, San Antonio: neighborhood, income, live in)

[Mr. Football]

Cy-Fair ISD, the largest Recognized school district in the State of Texas.

As for best high school, they're all different, yet all the same....Federalized Public schools are what they are. Find which one's right for you.

If you want a Public School with a predominately upper middle class demographic:

Cy-Fair
Cy-Creek
Cy-Woods
Cy-Ranch
Klein
Klein Collins
Klein Oak
Tomball
The Woodlands
The Woodlands College Park
Kingwood
Kingwood Park
Clear Creek
Clear Lake
Friendswood
Clements
Kempner
Dulles
Katy
Katy Taylor
Cinco Ranch
Seven Lakes
Stratford
Memorial
Bellaire

[SLoriginal'71]

Stephen F Austin HS and Clements HS are both outstanding schools located in Sugar Land. The Middle schools and elementary schools that feed into both those High schools are good. Due to my previous job I visited a lot of schools all over Houston and surrounding areas. I am sure there are some good HISD schools but I can tell you I have seen MANY very scary schools in Houston..........from High Schools even all the way down to Elementary schools. Its pretty sad when elementary school age kids are dropping F bombs or being beyond disrespectful to teachers/adults. I also saw many teachers who talked very ugly to the children. I never saw anything like that in any of the schools in the Sugar Land area. Let me just say though, that not all Fort Bend ISD schools are great. You can't just look at a whole ISD and expect every school in that ISD to be of the same quality.

[LizzySWW]

Originally Posted by crbcrbrgv

Kerr High school is better than all the SBISD high schools. Chancellor, Rees and Liestman elemntary schools are as good as any SBISD elementary. Miller Intermediate is outstanding. The middle schools are a wreck. Obviously, that's a big issue.

To crbcrbgv: I'm wanting to understand.........so you are saying that Kerr High School in Alief tops both Memorial Sr. and Stratord Sr. High Schools in SBISD. And the elem schools you listed are as good as the SBISD elem schools I posted? I have just personally never seen those school stats.

To the OP: If you are interested in SBISD please look up each school I posted for stats. They can't be beat in all of the city limits! Like all IDS's you have to look at schools individually. Some others have posted some great school districts too, the catch is a pretty long commute....but you do get a much bigger house for your money in those areas & that may be important for your needs.

[EM1956]

Kerr High School is certainly up there with ANY high school in the Harris/Ft.Bend/Montgomery counties area. You must apply for the school, and it has consistently rated high. Kerr is a college prep school. It is also much smaller than most high schools. Kinda like a private school without the cost.

The Alief elementaries listed are also good. Alief's elementaries overall are good (there are some bad ones- like Best), mostly I think related to the excellent teacher training/inservicing that Alief requires. Much like HISD, Alief serves a large, multicultural population which presents unique challenges in educating young minds.

[BBall Coach]

If you want to know which districts as a whole are considered the best in the area, those titles would go to Katy ISD and Cypress-Fairbanks ISD. Both have achieved recognized status as school districts several times over the past 5 years. Overall, the others are a tier below that at academically acceptable.

There are however, some very good schools in each district so many people are correct in advising you to look at the individual schools in the areas you're considering. There are several websites out there with the pertinent information that you desire.

This one actually utilizes a map so may be very helpful to you.
Texas School Performance Maps

On this one, change the state to Texas and you can search for school information by district, county, city or specific school names.
National Center for Educational Achievement/Just for the Kids

This site is the official source for whatever information you may need, but it is a little tricky to navigate if you're unfamiliar. You will find the most detailed and comprehensive data here though, if you have the patience to stick with it until you figure it out. Click on "State Accountability Ratings" at which point you can chose a specific year or the multi-year link to see data all the way back to 2004. Then there is the previous years link for data prior to 2004 (not sure why anybody would need that, but it's available). From there, I would choose to list my data by district or school type. If you do it by school type I would also choose the option to sort your list by region. Houston is Region 4. Schools labeled exemplary and recognized are what you will probably be looking for and you can choose to only pull those ones up.

Texas Education Agency - Testing and Accountability

Hope this helps.

[kenoshakristy]

Thanks for all the great info. I have been finding houses in The Woodlands, Spring and Katy that I like so far. My thought is that I should find a great High School then work down from there. Any thought on that??

[EasilyAmused]

I would put the Katy schools over ConroeISD any day of the week,

As for best DISTRICTS (not one good school out of the whole DISTRICT), Clear Lake has the best over all DISTRICT. All schools are tier one. Spring Branch ISD, is excellent but you have to have a serious income to live there and hit Memorial HS or Stratford HS. The burb districts (Fort Bend, Friendswood, Cypress and Katy,etc) are about the same.CONROE ISD being a little weaker than most.Spring ISD is really not desired from what I can tell on these boards. I think Klein ISD is hit and miss as well.

HISD has pockets, but once again it's for extremely high income neighborhoods.

[BBall Coach]

Originally Posted by EasilyAmused

I would put the Katy schools over ConroeISD any day of the week,

As for best DISTRICTS (not one good school out of the whole DISTRICT), Clear Lake has the best over all DISTRICT. All schools are tier one. Spring Branch ISD, is excellent but you have to have a serious income to live there and hit Memorial HS or Stratford HS. The burb districts (Fort Bend, Friendswood, Cypress and Katy,etc) are about the same.CONROE ISD being a little weaker than most.Spring ISD is really not desired from what I can tell on these boards. I think Klein ISD is hit and miss as well.

HISD has pockets, but once again it's for extremely high income neighborhoods.

Oh yeah...I forgot about Clear Creek ISD because I hardly ever hear people talking about them. They are also a recognized district although Clear Lake HS itself hasn't achieved that status since 2006.

[AlexTx]

Is there a website that shows the test scores and profile for each school?

I used to have a link to the Chronicle that had a "grade" for each school, but the link doesn't work anymore.

[sevfiv]

^Schooldigger has some information, as well as Schoolmatters..
Schooldigger.com -- Search and compare elementary, middle, and high schools.
SchoolMatters - Home

for the OP, I would look in to magnet programs as well - I think they can be a b*tch to deal with sometimes, but it offers options to attend schools not in your immediate zoned area.

Fwiw, I went to all HISD schools - Horn Elementary, Lanier MS, and Bellaire HS. No complaints here.