New state report card for schools - Cobb tops high schools (Atlanta: home, to buy)

[Seatlien]

I'm not sure why we would rank the five urban counties and not include APS.

High School CCRPI (including APS):

Cobb - 86.3
Gwinnett - 76.4
Fulton - 73.9
Dekalb - 66.4
Clayton - 61
APS - 60.3

Overall CCRPI:

Gwinnett - 93.5
Fulton - 85.7
Cobb - 85.4
Dekalb - 71.2
Clayton - 70.2
APS - 68.4

I believe APS' overall score is indeed a significant reason people will not consider Atlanta when relocating. There are a few good schools to be found within APS, but those areas are too expensive for most people.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by Seatlien

I believe APS' overall score is indeed a significant reason people will not consider Atlanta when relocating. There are a few good schools to be found within APS, but those areas are too expensive for most people.

I have to disagree.

The excellence of APS schools is a very strong draw in several areas. They are bustling with kids and families and are the fastest growing parts of the city. There's also an abundance of stellar private schools for those who want that option.

Houses are a bit pricey but no worse than many of the upscale neighborhoods in the suburban counties.

[DONNIEANDDONNA417]

way to go Kids...glad things are getting better

[jeoff]

Most folks don't want to, or can't pay upscale prices either in the city or in the 'burbs, and the only schools in APS that are comperable with suburban schools are in the "pricey areas." There are very nice "downscale" neigborhoods in the burbs that have schools that would be considered great by APS standards--no such animal in the city. Not saying the city is bad, I would like to move there--just stating the nature of getting into a good public school in the city.

Originally Posted by arjay57

I have to disagree.

The excellence of APS schools is a very strong draw in several areas. They are bustling with kids and families and are the fastest growing parts of the city. There's also an abundance of stellar private schools for those who want that option.

Houses are a bit pricey but no worse than many of the upscale neighborhoods in the suburban counties.

[kferq]

The previous thread,

Originally Posted by Mattie

//www.city-data.com/forum/atlan...t-cards-3.html

had a good discussion of why APS schools serving poorer areas did not do well in this set of rankings. These rankings look predominantly at test scores and so reflect the how strong the current students are, not how well they were taught. Other rankings that include a bigger adjustment for poverty, show that some (but not many) of these APS schools are actually doing fairly well.

[netdragon]

To be fair to Atlanta, its public schools in high poverty areas far exceed those in high poverty areas in other cities (Hartford, L.A., Baltimore). For instance, I am holding an investment property in Pittsburgh, and though that area is super high poverty in the midst of gentrification PAINS causing wide-scale vacancies and extremely high rents due to proximity to downtown and shortage of undamaged properties, it has pretty decent schools. BUT, that being said, they are still NOT up to par compared to suburban schools. If you want urban, close in, and good schools, you can live in Smyrna. Or Sandy Springs. Or even Marietta isn't that far out (but too far for me). I'd have Brookhaven and Dunwoody on the list in the past but Dekalb school system has crashed and I'd probably be sending my kids to private in those two areas, which defeats the purpose.

Anyway, I just don't see the point of living somewhere you either have to send the kids to private school or purchase multi-million dollar homes unless you have money to burn. Hence why one-half of Atlanta is filthy rich and the other half is dirt-poor with a few exceptions of "middle-of-the-road" areas like Ormewood Park, Grant Park, Knights Park, Riverside, University Center and Inman Park which still don't have the schools like Cobb and Gwinnett have.

So it seems to me either Atlanta is for those who don't have kids, have a money to burn on private schools, or are poor (but not for long because of gentrification). If people understand that, then I think the identity of Atlanta is pretty well understood.

[GeorgiaLakeSearch]

Originally Posted by netdragon

To be fair to Atlanta, its public schools in high poverty areas far exceed those in high poverty areas in other cities (Hartford, L.A., Baltimore). For instance, I am holding an investment property in Pittsburgh, and though that area is super high poverty in the midst of gentrification PAINS causing wide-scale vacancies and extremely high rents due to proximity to downtown and shortage of undamaged properties, it has pretty decent schools. BUT, that being said, they are still NOT up to par compared to suburban schools. If you want urban, close in, and good schools, you can live in Smyrna. Or Sandy Springs. Or even Marietta isn't that far out (but too far for me). I'd have Brookhaven and Dunwoody on the list in the past but Dekalb school system has crashed and I'd probably be sending my kids to private in those two areas, which defeats the purpose.

Anyway, I just don't see the point of living somewhere you either have to send the kids to private school or purchase multi-million dollar homes unless you have money to burn. Hence why one-half of Atlanta is filthy rich and the other half is dirt-poor with a few exceptions of "middle-of-the-road" areas like Ormewood Park, Grant Park, Knights Park, Riverside, University Center and Inman Park which still don't have the schools like Cobb and Gwinnett have.

So it seems to me either Atlanta is for those who don't have kids, have a money to burn on private schools, or are poor (but not for long because of gentrification). If people understand that, then I think the identity of Atlanta is pretty well understood.

Most cities are comprised of the wealthy and the poor. There are of course exceptions, Detroit is the first one I can think of. There are a few wealthy black sections left, but most blacks have left for suburban Metro Detroit.

[Marsha33]

Originally Posted by red92s

You are seriously overstating how much impact that rating has on real estate values. Fulton is the most populous county in the state, covers an immense geographic region, and is home to the state capital. People are not going to nix the entire swath off their list because of the overall score of the entire county.

People shop by district. Not by system.

Every single day there are people on here asking for information on Roswell and John's Creek. Every. Single. Day. Being "associated" with the southern part of the county clearly hasn't deterred them. By your logic, the entire county would have been struck from their list in the first pass.

Fulton is a great location for accessibility to jobs and the county has more top schools than Cobb County. The other piece of this is schools cannot always be analyzed just by test scores. Sometimes schools with high test scores just have more parents who pay for tutors and test prep. To really know how good a school means to talk to parents and teachers who know first hand.

[jeoff]

Check out the "performance flags" tab for each school and school system. It rates progress among subgroups--such as ethnicity and "economically disadvantaged'l even directly comparing these groups, very diverse gwinnett is doing very well, while APS and Dekalb County are not (they do well among the "white" subgroup, though).

Originally Posted by Marsha33

Fulton is a great location for accessibility to jobs and the county has more top schools than Cobb County. The other piece of this is schools cannot always be analyzed just by test scores. Sometimes schools with high test scores just have more parents who pay for tutors and test prep. To really know how good a school means to talk to parents and teachers who know first hand.

[kittyjo]

Originally Posted by Seatlien

I'm not sure why we would rank the five urban counties and not include APS.

High School CCRPI (including APS):

Cobb - 86.3
Gwinnett - 76.4
Fulton - 73.9
Dekalb - 66.4
Clayton - 61
APS - 60.3

Overall CCRPI:

Gwinnett - 93.5
Fulton - 85.7
Cobb - 85.4
Dekalb - 71.2
Clayton - 70.2
APS - 68.4

I believe APS' overall score is indeed a significant reason people will not consider Atlanta when relocating. There are a few good schools to be found within APS, but those areas are too expensive for most people.

I find it interesting that you ignore the intown district of Decatur City, which scored an overall of 93.7 ( higher than all the others listed above). It also has the 4th highest ranked elementary school in the entire state ( Oakhurst) and the other 3 are close behind. A lot of people would rather live there than OTP because there is not a badly performing school in the entire district,