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I rate Plano schools as one of the top school district in DFW, BUT what baffles me is if there is a culture of excellence and strong focus on academics, except NMSF numbers I haven't seen Plano schools winning regional/ state level competitions in Maths & Science. Check the results for UIL in Maths & Science for 5A, Annual Calculus Super Bowl competition by UT Arlington, Academic Decathalon or TMSCA (Texas Maths & Science Coaches association) for the last few years. There are other schools in DFW or Houston who have outperformed Plano schools in Maths & Science.To me it appears that this "culture of excellence" is focused among certain groups and specific programs.
From the article: Amy's research to develop a photosensitizer for photo dynamic therapy (PDT), an emerging cancer treatment that uses light energy to activate a drug that kills cancer, earned her a $75,000 Gordon E. Moore Award, awarded for the first time in 2010 in honor of the Intel co-founder and retired chairman and CEO. Her research earned first place at the world's largest pre-college science competition, the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, this year.
Other recent "mega" achievements from Plano ISD students are:
Those accolades are JUST from this spring 2011 semester. I don't think you can accuse the school of being all college prep/ SAT focused and light on the hard sciences by any means.
Agree about the 'culture of excellence', though I feel that the change in demographics of Plano over the last 10-15 years (i.e. large increase in Asian population) has greatly contributed to that. When you have a (ethnic) culture that expects such high performance of their children...the other kids better step up their game too or they'll be shut out. Nothing wrong with that...it can be a great thing, actually. It just doesn't work for everyone. My brother, for example, was a product of the Plano school system...and it completely failed him (not that that was the only reason he didn't succeed, of course...just that the mentality of the district wasn't a good match for him).
This is one thing that gives me pause about moving into the Plano ISD when we eventually buy a house; the presence of so many Asians. Let me explain. I grew up with Asians through high school. I've seen their dedication to academics, I remember my Indian friends would study 10 hours a day every day, and have what they called "saturday school" as well. Total focus. That meant no extracurricular activities, no sleepovers/birthday parties with school friends, no hanging out, nothing. Just work work work. And it payed off, they were always the top performers and eventually went on to prestigious colleges.
With my daughter we do stress performance in school, and her grades are good, she's a high B, low A type student right now (3rd grade). But we let her have a life. She played club soccer, basketball, she's currently auditioning to be in a school play. She has friends that we let her sleepover at occasionally, and we take her to her friends birthday parties. We dont drive her the way the Indians do. Thus I'm being brutally honest here, I dont think she would be able to compete with them academics wise. And since we know school rank counts for a lot when applying to colleges, if she was in Plano ISD she could end up with a low rank, not because she's a bad student, but because of the intense competition at the top. So these are the questions and trade offs I have to think about.
... BUT what baffles me is if there is a culture of excellence and strong focus on academics, except NMSF numbers I haven't seen Plano schools winning regional/ state level competitions in Maths & Science. Check the results for UIL in Maths & Science for 5A, Annual Calculus Super Bowl competition by UT Arlington, Academic Decathalon or TMSCA (Texas Maths & Science Coaches association) for the last few years. There are other schools in DFW or Houston who have outperformed Plano schools in Maths & Science.To me it appears that this "culture of excellence" is focused among certain groups and specific programs.
????
PISD has placed a kid on the Texas MathCOUNTS team two years in a row. That's a huge achievement, given that there's a school in the Austin area that has a faculty member whose entire job is MathCOUNTS prep and coaching, and who usually produces the entire 4-person team for the state.
Last year, PISD had a kid score a perfect 25 on the AMC 8 - one of less than 100 in the entire country.
This year, PISD had one kid make Intel finalist (Top 40 in the country) and another make semi-finalist (Top 300 in the country). That's no fluke - PISD has kids make this level most years.
As for academic decathlon, PSHS finished 13th in the state this year. I'll take that! It's surprising that Irving Nimitz beat them, but the other local schools that did better (FM Marcus and Coppell) are also highly regarded on here.
That's just what I'm generally aware of - I'm sure there are more achievements I could dig up from the PISD site.
Richardson has done an excellent job trying to stay ahead of the aging problem. They have the benefit of not tossing all their eggs into one basket and have developed multiple areas around town so there isn't a "good side/bad side" but offer jobs and housing reasonably close together.
Add in a strong police presence and strict code enforcement and that nips a lot of problems in the bud.
I hear a lot of people in my community compare us to Plano as in "well Plano has/does ..." Honestly, if our city were to follow the lead of any of our neighbors, I'm really most in favor of Richardson. They aren't perfect. But I love the commitment to parks and trees and community aesthetics and schools and community events.
Agree with this. Richardson is definitely one of those places where you dont judge a book by its cover...and tha's probably the only thing holding it back because most newbies WILL take just a superficial glance and not dig further before fleeing to the north. The city I reside in, Garland, has taken an opposite approach and put all their eggs in one basket (Firewheel). While it has been successful in helping improve Garland's image, I feel it's come at the expense of other parts of Garland where help really could be used. But props to Richardson
At this point, we are pushing our son to work harder. He gets straight As without working very hard but at least this year, he had to work really hard just to place 7th in the school science fair (out of 28 entries!)
We won't be sending him to Saturday school, but he gets limited leisure time during the school year unless it's the weekend, and we push him to do things that are hard for him. He's not athletic so he does have additional time for school work should it become an issue. Personally, I think the presence of Asians in our neighborhood and schools is a huge plus. He'll be competing with Asians on the world stage and he needs to be able to hang.
At this point, we are pushing our son to work harder. He gets straight As without working very hard but at least this year, he had to work really hard just to place 7th in the school science fair (out of 28 entries!)
We won't be sending him to Saturday school, but he gets limited leisure time during the school year unless it's the weekend, and we push him to do things that are hard for him. He's not athletic so he does have additional time for school work should it become an issue. Personally, I think the presence of Asians in our neighborhood and schools is a huge plus. He'll be competing with Asians on the world stage and he needs to be able to hang.
I'm not criticizing the fact that the Asians are academically focused at all. It works for them, and like I said, getting good grades is something that we expect from our daughter. I just wonder if such a hard core focus from very young (the kids I grew up with had this mindset as early as 4th grade) is healthy for them as they get older. Many of them tended to have limited social skills (I guess the term would be 'nerds/geeks). All the guys I knew ended up in arranged marriages set up by their parents. Now this is the culture for them, but honestly, that was the only way any of the guys I knew would be getting married, because they were for the most part, totally incapable of decent social interactions with almost anyone, guy or girl. I dont know that this is what we want for our kids. If there was a way to get the best of both worlds I would be happy, but I suspect that to get the high scores that the Indians get, a similar focus on academics to the detriment of everything else is necessary
In my son's class, there are a few complete "tools" like you describe, but most of the Indians and Asians are pretty sociable, well-adjusted people. Yes, they attend Saturday school, and pay more attention to their grades than a lot of the white kids (who often pay no attention at all to that), but it hardly consumes their lives.
According to my son's Chinese friends, Rice MS is chock-full of system-gaming wonks with no lives aside from their books. So I guess avoid Rice and its upward feeders - Jasper and PWSH - to avoid that lifestyle.
This is one thing that gives me pause about moving into the Plano ISD when we eventually buy a house; the presence of so many Asians. Let me explain. I grew up with Asians through high school. I've seen their dedication to academics, I remember my Indian friends would study 10 hours a day every day, and have what they called "saturday school" as well. Total focus. That meant no extracurricular activities, no sleepovers/birthday parties with school friends, no hanging out, nothing. Just work work work. And it payed off, they were always the top performers and eventually went on to prestigious colleges.
With my daughter we do stress performance in school, and her grades are good, she's a high B, low A type student right now (3rd grade). But we let her have a life. She played club soccer, basketball, she's currently auditioning to be in a school play. She has friends that we let her sleepover at occasionally, and we take her to her friends birthday parties. We dont drive her the way the Indians do. Thus I'm being brutally honest here, I dont think she would be able to compete with them academics wise. And since we know school rank counts for a lot when applying to colleges, if she was in Plano ISD she could end up with a low rank, not because she's a bad student, but because of the intense competition at the top. So these are the questions and trade offs I have to think about.
This kind of stuff cracks me up. Don't buy into this 'automaton' garbage just to make you feel better about achieving less.
Let me tell you, not only did I 'have a life' (good friends, going out, even a freakin' part time job at the movie theater - that was the super cool place to work when I was in high school), I played club AND school athletics, including volleyball, basketball, soccer (club), softball (club - they didn't have a team at Plano yet), and I ran cross country and track.
I took AP English, Calculus, Economics, Govt, Spanish, etc, etc...I started college as a second semester sophomore AND was on collegiate athletic teams, as well.
I took piano lessons on my own time, and I did volunteer work with a local ministry and hospital. I was part of NHS, the Russian club, the Spanish club, and I was on the Ac Dec team. I wound up with a Natl Merit scholarship and and Ac Dec scholarship (bc we placed in state competition).
My parents didn't ask me to do any of these things. All they wanted was to be sure I made good grades and took advantage of the opportunity for good schooling. I wanted to do these things. It was fun.
Guess what? Avoiding competition because it might make you look bad is NOT the way to get through life. Life IS competition. And the great thing about being somewhere that they foster it and push you is that you learn to compete and you learn to push yourself. I am so grateful for the life lessons and tools I got from that environment. You often don't know what you are capable of until you are forced to try.
Rank? In the end, even with an A average and mostly all honors classes, I didn't wind up in the top 10% (11%!!!!). But I got into a good school, my other friends of similar rank got into places like Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, NYU, Columbia, etc. And when we went to our universities, we had the tools to totally kick butt.
This kind of stuff cracks me up. Don't buy into this 'automaton' garbage just to make you feel better about achieving less.
Let me tell you, not only did I 'have a life' (good friends, going out, even a freakin' part time job at the movie theater - that was the super cool place to work when I was in high school), I played club AND school athletics, including volleyball, basketball, soccer (club), softball (club - they didn't have a team at Plano yet), and I ran cross country and track.
I took AP English, Calculus, Economics, Govt, Spanish, etc, etc...I started college as a second semester sophomore AND was on collegiate athletic teams, as well.
I took piano lessons on my own time, and I did volunteer work with a local ministry and hospital. I was part of NHS, the Russian club, the Spanish club, and I was on the Ac Dec team. I wound up with a Natl Merit scholarship and and Ac Dec scholarship (bc we placed in state competition).
My parents didn't ask me to do any of these things. All they wanted was to be sure I made good grades and took advantage of the opportunity for good schooling. I wanted to do these things. It was fun.
Guess what? Avoiding competition because it might make you look bad is NOT the way to get through life. Life IS competition. And the great thing about being somewhere that they foster it and push you is that you learn to compete and you learn to push yourself. I am so grateful for the life lessons and tools I got from that environment. You often don't know what you are capable of until you are forced to try.
Rank? In the end, even with an A average and mostly all honors classes, I didn't wind up in the top 10% (11%!!!!). But I got into a good school, my other friends of similar rank got into places like Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, NYU, Columbia, etc. And when we went to our universities, we had the tools to totally kick butt.
*Clap clap clap*
Well said. Although I have no compunction about making my children do things they may not want to do. That is called parenting.
This kind of stuff cracks me up. Don't buy into this 'automaton' garbage just to make you feel better about achieving less.
Let me tell you, not only did I 'have a life' (good friends, going out, even a freakin' part time job at the movie theater - that was the super cool place to work when I was in high school), I played club AND school athletics, including volleyball, basketball, soccer (club), softball (club - they didn't have a team at Plano yet), and I ran cross country and track.
I took AP English, Calculus, Economics, Govt, Spanish, etc, etc...I started college as a second semester sophomore AND was on collegiate athletic teams, as well.
I took piano lessons on my own time, and I did volunteer work with a local ministry and hospital. I was part of NHS, the Russian club, the Spanish club, and I was on the Ac Dec team. I wound up with a Natl Merit scholarship and and Ac Dec scholarship (bc we placed in state competition).
My parents didn't ask me to do any of these things. All they wanted was to be sure I made good grades and took advantage of the opportunity for good schooling. I wanted to do these things. It was fun.
Guess what? Avoiding competition because it might make you look bad is NOT the way to get through life. Life IS competition. And the great thing about being somewhere that they foster it and push you is that you learn to compete and you learn to push yourself. I am so grateful for the life lessons and tools I got from that environment. You often don't know what you are capable of until you are forced to try.
Rank? In the end, even with an A average and mostly all honors classes, I didn't wind up in the top 10% (11%!!!!). But I got into a good school, my other friends of similar rank got into places like Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, NYU, Columbia, etc. And when we went to our universities, we had the tools to totally kick butt.
A few points to make;
1) You pretty much proved my point. You had an A average and mostly honors classes, yet you STILL didnt make it to the top 10%! If that isnt testimony to the ferocious competitiveness at Plano then I dont know what is! And here is what I worry about; you had an A average with a bunch of honors so you were a pretty good student; yet that doesnt mean squat to UT. You are not in the top 10% so you pretty much dont count as far as getting in. My daughter is 8. In 10 years time when she is looking to go to college do you think getting it will be easier or harder than when you were applying? My money is on harder. So maybe it will be top 5% gets in.
2) I'm not "buying into the automaton garbage to make myself feel better". I SAW this for myself. I attended an International School in the South Pacific for grades 7-12. Students from Asia (both Indian subcontinent and Far East Asia) comprised maybe 15-20% of the school population. I had several friends from that part of the world, not '1 or 2'. Plus my 4 siblings also had friends from there so we were able to share our stories about them. Furthermore I had a lot of friends from Asia in college too. That is over 10 years of experience with people from that region. So I'm not just stereotyping, I'm going off what I was told by these same people and what I saw for myself. The vast majority of the parents of kids I knew in high school did NOT want their kids playing sports, or doing much recreation (unless it was PE in which they had no choice). Growing up I played a game called cricket which is popular in India, a few boys loved the game but had to ask the rest of us non Indians to bring extra shirts for them to play in since their parents would freak if they knew they were playing sports. Now do ALL Indian parents act this way? of course not. But I'm going off what I've been exposed to, and for all your vehemence, I dont think it's a minority view in that community.
Now I will say that now I've been in the United States for several years, I have seen differences between US born Indians and those that come here as adults. The US Indians do tend to have a less restricted lifestyle than those from India so I will concede that.
3) I never said that my daughter could not compete. I said that we did not drive her the way those Indian parents did. If we did push her that way, make her attend school 6 days a week, study 10 hours a day, I have no doubt that she could compete with anyone. But like I said, we choose to let her have a life. She's 8, I feel she needs to be able to run around outside with other kids, play sports, learn about interacting with others in different settings. Life does exist outside the textbook. But that does not mean that I would allow her to slack off on school, or not try her hardest to do well. I just want her to be able to deal with other aspects of life as well. Like I said in an earlier post, if she could excel in both then that would be the best outcome.
4) So let me get this straight; you were an A student, took a bunch of honors, had a social life, joined a bunch of extracurriculars, had a part time job, did athletics, were a National merit scholar, and still found time to take piano lessons on the side! Well sir I doff my hat to you. That's incredible. If my kid could achieve all that I would be a happy man. Somehow though I do think that your achievements are on the rare side dont you think? How many kids honestly are able to do all that? It's not impossible, but let's just say that you are a part of a special group there.
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