Walnut Hill Elementary? Withers Elementary? Help! (Dallas, Fort Worth: 2014, houses, transfer)

[wellzie]

Hello!
I live in the area where our Elementary School is Walnut Hill. I can not find ANYTHING about this school other then the DISD website and the greatschools.net website. I don't know any kids who go here either. Anytime I ask people about it, I hear tons of GREAT things about Withers Elementary nearby, but nothing about Walnut Hill. Does anyone know about Walnut Hill ? Good? Bad? Teachers? Community? Parental involvement? I know Withers has an amazing PTA and wonderful dual language program, but I haven't heard a word about Walnut Hill. We will probably be putting out daughter in private school because of this. I am going to walk through Walnut Hill next week and hopefully visit an open house date, if they have one. ANY input on Walnut Hill or other schools around us would help so much! THANKS!

[Considering Coming Back]

Walnut Hill is in the feeder pattern for Thomas Jefferson High School which is not considered acceptable by even the staunchest DISD boosters. Withers feeds into W.T. White where you will still find a clustering of families with above average incomes and (tier 1) college bound students.

Walnut Hill is 81% free/reduced lunch: http://www.dallasisd.org/cms/lib/TX0...2-13/DP224.pdf

Withers is 68%: http://www.dallasisd.org/cms/lib/TX0...2-13/DP230.pdf

That's a bigger gap than some might realize. You should still visit the campuses. It will be worth your time.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by wellzie

Hello!
I live in the area where our Elementary School is Walnut Hill. I can not find ANYTHING about this school other then the DISD website and the greatschools.net website. I don't know any kids who go here either. Anytime I ask people about it, I hear tons of GREAT things about Withers Elementary nearby, but nothing about Walnut Hill. Does anyone know about Walnut Hill ? Good? Bad? Teachers? Community? Parental involvement? I know Withers has an amazing PTA and wonderful dual language program, but I haven't heard a word about Walnut Hill. We will probably be putting out daughter in private school because of this. I am going to walk through Walnut Hill next week and hopefully visit an open house date, if they have one. ANY input on Walnut Hill or other schools around us would help so much! THANKS!

A friend lives right behind ESD which is more or less adjacent to Walnut Hill Elementary. His impression is that the school itself is fine with some involved parents and caring faculty etc.

Regarding the North Dallas privates, there are a lot options ranging from some of the best private schools in the country to little better than religious indoctrination camps. Regarding the former demand outstrips supply at all times ergo you may well decide to apply that does not mean that your child will be accepted. I'm trying to be a jerk - people told me that same thing years ago when we decided to explore catholic schooling for our son and later our daughter - applying turned out to be the best academic decision we've ever made. Apply but understand from a pure numbers perspective the odds are not great. You might want to call up St. Monica, at the SW corner of Walnut Hill and Midway, an see if you can wriggle into the queue.


ETA - I second the CCB's notion that TJHS as a capstone to K-12 is unthinkable.

[BigDGeek]

Avoid Walnut Hill Elementary; it feeds to TJ and you don't want to be anywhere near that train wreck.

If you want to stay on that side of town, look for houses in the W.T. White feeder pattern only. Some schools are better than others. DeGolyer and Gooch have a better rep than Withers.

[Lakewooder]

Actually TJ has been pretty good at what it does: getting low-income immigrant and ESL students into college, trade schools and the military. Most of those going to college will be the first in their families to do so...

I doubt they have all the AP courses that W.T. White would have (Hillcrest and Woodrow are other comprehensives on the Newsweek/Washington Post lists for AP particpation - Woodrow also has IB - to which you can apply for transfer).

Here is an interesting story about the Asian Studies Academy at TJ:

Chinese culture is abundant at northwest Dallas school | Dallas-Fort Worth Education News - News for Dallas, Texas - The Dallas Morning News

[wellzie]

We actually have applied to two private schools over in that area, but that is the school our neighborhood feeds into, so we needed to explore that option as well. Thanks everyone!

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by Lakewooder

Actually TJ has been pretty good at what it does: getting low-income immigrant and ESL students into college, trade schools and the military. Most of those going to college will be the first in their families to do so...

I doubt they have all the AP courses that W.T. White would have (Hillcrest and Woodrow are other comprehensives on the Newsweek/Washington Post lists for AP particpation - Woodrow also has IB - to which you can apply for transfer).

Here is an interesting story about the Asian Studies Academy at TJ:

Chinese culture is abundant at northwest Dallas school | Dallas-Fort Worth Education News - News for Dallas, Texas - The Dallas Morning News

2010 TJHS average scores:

ACT - 16.8
SAT - 828

I can't find the % of kids who took either test. Those numbers are flatly horrifying.

[Labradormom]

Good for you to at least go through the school and see it for yourself. Withers gets a lot of neighborhood families excited because of the dual language program but it has a mixed reputation about the "general education" program. DeGolyer's reputation is built on it having a strong general ed and growing their dual-language program. Both Withers and DeGolyer have excellent and very involved PTA and Dads' Club programs. Unfortunately, Walnut Hill has never maintained that level of parent participation.

[kristengibbins]

We will be sending our 5 year old into the dual language program next year. We are eccstatic that we got a spot. We researched every single private school in town. After visiting the school and meeting with the parents, we knew this was the right decision.

- Rating: A new rating system for Texas public schools was released this month. Withers was in the 20% of schools in TX that met standard (highest rating) and had all three distinctions for academic performance in reading, english, and math. (Note the very prominent area of Dallas that surprsingly did not make the list for elementary schools.) You can read about it here:
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[SIZE=3][/SIZE][SIZE=3]http://www.tea.state.tx.us/Communications/Press_Releases/2013_releases/Texas_schools_achieving_Met_Standard_rating_plus_a ll_academic_distinctions/[/SIZE]
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- New Library: This year, Withers is unveiling a $100,000 library that was completed through the efforts of the PTA. It's beautiful!

- Some news about a new wellness initiative:
http://prestonhollow.advocatemag.com/2013/08/13/withers-elementarys-wellness-initiative-for-2013-2014-school-year/

- And finally, a story that ran in The Dallas Morning News earlier this summer, which states:"Nestled in a northwest Dallas area with an abundance of private schools, a Dallas ISD campus is holding its own and thriving."

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/metro/20130603-community-activism-propels-dallas-elementary-school-to-next-level.ece

[synchronicity]

Originally Posted by EDS_

2010 TJHS average scores:

ACT - 16.8
SAT - 828

I can't find the % of kids who took either test. Those numbers are flatly horrifying.

51.6% on the SAT, and 38.6% on the ACT (yes, I still have the spreadsheet). Believe it or not, 7 DISD schools had a lower participation rate on the SAT (including Woodrow Wilson at 47.9%). The 38% on the ACT was one of the higher rates in DISD among non-magnets) (ironically enough, Wilson was even higher at 44.9%).

Also, the ACT average was 16.6, not 16.8, although that doesn't make much difference.

The scary thing is that once you take away the magnets, TJHS is middle of the road among DISD high schools. I know TAG and SEM get lots of plaudits, but TAG had 45 graduates in the 2010 class and SEM had 86. That's out of ~6,500 total DISD graduates (and likely quite a few more who dropped out prior to graduating), or ~2% of the total. Fine, so those two schools had average SATs of 1278 and 1236...heck, take the 3 Plano HS and take the top 130 students out of their ~3,200 graduates (just under half as many as DISD, so about the top 4%) and I wonder what THEIR average SATs would be. I'll guess it would be a heckuva lot higher than 1278.