School information (Murfreesboro, Franklin, Hendersonville: house, transfer to, neighborhoods)

[bassman]

As a possible transfer to the area, what is the best place to find out information about the quality of schools in each county?

[akm4]

Wiliamson County and Franklin Special are great across the board. Other districts also have very good schools, but tend to be hit and miss.

Do you have a city/neighborhood in mind?

[Kim918]

Originally Posted by bassman

As a possible transfer to the area, what is the best place to find out information about the quality of schools in each county?

Hi bassman,

If you want to check schools in a particular area, you can go to www.greatschools.net and type in the area and state. All the schools there will come up. You can see their rating and comments from parents.

Good Luck!

[ExIslander]

Here's a link to the state's K-12 report cards:

TN Department of Education:K-12

When we first moved to Tennessee and rented in Cool Springs, we did a lot of research on schools and neighborhoods, the conclusions I came to were these:

* The Brentwood/Franklin schools are amazing.
* The missus was staying home with the kids, and on one income, we couldn't get a house we wanted in those zones.
* In the less affluent areas of Williamson County, the schools are still very good; however, at least where the achievement scores were concerned, they weren't markedly different from those in similar socioeconomic areas of other counties like Sumner, Rutherford or Wilson.

So I concluded that if what we could afford was Spring Hill, we weren't going to do any worse by picking a school zone with care in Hendersonville or Murfreesboro or, as it turned out, Mt. Juliet.

The advantage of Williamson County is that you don't have bad zones to avoid. Another advantage is, because the schools are such a draw in Williamson, the schools WILL get what they need and want most of the time. You generally don't see the budget silliness such as what happened recently here in Wilson County, where the "good schools versus low taxes" war is just getting good and started.

[mad fiddler]

A question: I can understand saying that schools in Williamson/Sumner are better than other schools in the area, but are they really that great? Tennessee schools in general don't rank very high nationally, so the comparison seems a little skewed to start with. Even the average ACTs for high performing counties aren't really that outstanding. Some states -- like Minnesota -- have higher averages, and several other states hover around the general vicinity of those scores.

[akm4]

I was just answering the OP's question about schools in the area. I don't think anyone expects them to stack up to New England's premier districts!

[mad fiddler]

Originally Posted by akm4

I was just answering the OP's question about schools in the area. I don't think anyone expects them to stack up to New England's premier districts!

No problem. I wasn't directing this at your post, but more at the general consensus expressed here that schools in those two counties are exceptional.

I wasn't comparing them to the best schools in the northeast, but to state averages. A couple of entire states rank higher in ACTs -- a statistic I find interesting.

[ExIslander]

That raises an interesting question: Is there an accepted definition of what kids should be learning in each grade on a national level, and thus identify where Tennessee on the whole falls behind? And not just the average, let's say the top tenth percentile -- what do their best students get in school that ours don't?

[mad fiddler]

Originally Posted by ExIslander

That raises an interesting question: Is there an accepted definition of what kids should be learning in each grade on a national level, and thus identify where Tennessee on the whole falls behind? And not just the average, let's say the top tenth percentile -- what do their best students get in school that ours don't?

And it's not just how Tennessee as a whole falls behind, but why do students attending the "best" schools reach only the average score of some states?

The ACT is standardized, and is given usually in the junior or senior year, so it's a measure of where students end up at the end of their school careers, regardless of where they were at any particular time, and is comparable across states.

[septimus]

I think it depends what you define as great and it is hard to compare SAT/ACT scores because they are very regional. It seems everyone in TN takes the ACT and only those top students hoping to go to college in the Northeast take the SAT so TN does well on the SAT compared to Massachusetts which is a state where everyone takes the SAT but Massachussetts generally has the highest Average ACT scores because only a few motivated students take the ACT in MAass.

Personally I think there needs to be a national standard test that everyone takes so we could accurately compare. The NY times did a piece over a year ago that basically said a kid scoring advanced on the TN state exam wouldn't get needs improvement on the Mass test and since each state sents their own standards.

Williamson County schools are good not because they have a amazing resources or even innovated education ideology going on but because they are working with kids that no matter what school they went to urban ghetto, poor rural they would do well because they come from generally educated families with an intact family unit.

As for Wilson County, I only know what I read in the media and btwn the ACLU suing the because of the preying parents and the decision to keep a football coach and fire classroom aids it doesn't seem that they value education. Williamson County has its own issues like not building classrooms quickly enough to meet the growth