Need help from people who are well-versed in Tampa Bay areas and good schools! (credit, centers)

[Pragmaticus]

Originally Posted by floridagirl777

Great Schools is not the best indicator of how good the schools are. I know several schools that are not all that great that have very high ratings on that site. Great Schools looks at schools through the eyes of parents. No offense to parents, but most parents don't know how to truly judge the quality of a school. If the teachers are nice and the principal is friendly, most parents will give the school a top rating. I look at schools through the eyes of an educator, so my perspective is a bit different. I look at the school's population, whether or not the teachers are using best practices, how focused they are on test scores, what curricula they are using, how motivated are the teachers regarding professional development, etc.

Example please?

[NHborn]

Originally Posted by floridagirl777

It is a nice area, but the OP was looking at the quality of schools. Land O' Lakes does not have the best schools.

Compared to what?

[floridagirl777]

Originally Posted by NHborn

Compared to what?

Northern Pinellas County.

[NHborn]

Originally Posted by floridagirl777

Northern Pinellas County.

Well Land O Lakes is the best in Pasco and better than 90% of anything in Hillsborough. Its the best choice for those families who cant afford quality housing in northern Pinellas and south Tampa/Cheval.

[undun]

Here is a link to school report cards. You can search with all different criteria. It is reliable.
School Accountability Report .
If schools are important stick to A rated schools only. Alonso High School in Westchase is not A rated and with reason. There is an excellent charter high school, Steinbrenner, that some Westchase residents send their kids to but it is a bit of a drive. Also Westchase is probably out of your price range unless you want a small townhouse.
If you search Pinellas county you can find A rated schools in Palm Harbor. Safety Harbor is also a nice community, Oldsmar, there are other but not all areas will be equally nice.

[DUNNDFRNT]

Originally Posted by undun

Here is a link to school report cards. You can search with all different criteria. It is reliable.
School Accountability Report .
If schools are important stick to A rated schools only. Alonso High School in Westchase is not A rated and with reason. There is an excellent charter high school, Steinbrenner, that some Westchase residents send their kids to but it is a bit of a drive. Also Westchase is probably out of your price range unless you want a small townhouse.
If you search Pinellas county you can find A rated schools in Palm Harbor. Safety Harbor is also a nice community, Oldsmar, there are other but not all areas will be equally nice.

Steinbrenner is not a charter school is Lutz's high school.

[BigWashSr]

Sllah,

Reading your post really got me to thinking. We are in Germany and will be locating to Tampa in the next two weeks. We really want to find a home with a good elementary school for our child. We are looking in the Clearwater area. Of course everything on line "looks good" on paper. We just want a good area where we don't have to worry about our possessions being gone when we return home... Does anyone known anything about Plumb elementary school?

As you gather information, can you continue to share?

If anyone else has helpful information, it would be appreciated...

James

[Stewabby]

Plumb looks like a good school:

Plumb Elementary School - Clearwater, Florida - FL - School overview

[wololoe]

We came to the conclusion that our daughter will not be going to any Florida school period. You may not be aware, but the state just released it's own internal rankings. The word 'Poor' would be an understatement of the review of the school system as a state wide institution. The school rankings were so bad Florida changed the ratings and publicly admitted to doing so.

My belief is that Florida caters to tourists and non-child household (old people)and not working nor professional people. Who cares about schools? Young families. Who lives in Florida, mostly? Not young families.

Of course any child can still succeed in Florida, but I prefer to remove as many obstacles from the path as possible. And in many other states, this particular obstacle will be removed.

[MortonR]

I think you may be somewhat misinformed in many regards.

The school grades were set so that they could not drop more than one letter grade. This was done because the test criteria ratcheted up significantly this past year, creating a statistical anomaly that more or less shifted everyone down in the ratings. We knew it was coming. I would also suggest that you look into this with more detail, as it is clear you don't understand the system or what has been predicted for some years. For example:

A school gets it's letter grade through several criteria:

Total points based on student achievement

Gains by the lower 10% of the students

A school I used to work at has been an "A" rated school since the program began. We knew the day would come when no matter how well we did we would lose the "A". They lost it this year. Why?

The majority of the students are high achieving. Let's say they are all at or above 88% on the point scale. No matter how high my point total towards an "A", I have to bring those bottom 10% students up a minimum of say, 5% (this number changes annually.)

So let's say that my bottom 10% students are at the lowest score of 88%. That means I have to bring them up to 93% this year to maintain my "A".

If you understand the numbers, you're getting to a point where statistically you can't go any further. In other words, your students are going to hit the wall as far as scores, meaning there is no possible way every student will make it to 100%. It's simply not going to happen.

The DOE saw this coming and "reset" the scores. It had to happen, everyone knew it would, and it's not a surprise to anyone in the educational community. As with any sort of testing, it has to be constantly "tweaked" to maintain relevance. No different that a certain percentage of the questions on the SAT or ACT being there for evaluation and not counting towards the score.

Florida continues to lead the nation in educational advances, courtesy of the Bush legacy. it's not something I'm pleased with as a school district employee, but it does push the educational community to continue to move forward, which is not what's happening in many other states.

If you check the demographics Florida has not been a state of retirees and tourists for some years. The median age and households with children have grown exponentially since the early 90s, making retirees a minority group for the most part. This varies from area to area within the state, of course, but across the board Florida is not primarily retirees nor has it been for some time.

The Tampa area has some of the best and highest achieving high schools in the nation. There are plenty of other high achieving schools throughout the state, so to suggest that Florida is an educational backwater is simply pure ignorance on your part, and shows that you have done little to look into the subject with any depth or credible resources.

RM