What's wrong with McKinney??? (Dallas, Plano: home, school district, college)

[Johnhw2]

Originally Posted by BigDGeek

Bet you someday our suburbs will go all the way to Oklahoma. I think we're more than halfway there already. How many miles from Anna to the Red River?

Its about 37 miles from Anna to the Red River. Durant, Ok is already considered part of the DFW extended SMA based upon trade and people flow for commerce between the two locations. The growth push North is strong.

[txgolfer130]

Originally Posted by Brookside

Just to throw another element into the conversation, because no one else has mentioned it: the commute is made even more awful by the construction on Central Expressway and the awful traffic on 380.

I realize highway construction is a *good* thing and when it is finally finished it will be marvellous. But right now it is teeth-clinching and soul-eroding to drive through.

But the difference is that McKinney (as well as other CoCo cities) have and are planning out their expansion(s) and doing so in a way that is not completely shutting down BOTH sides of a major freeway at the same time, IN ADDITION to doing it because it MUST be done. The growing pains and "modifications" are so that as McKinney (& others) grow, the cities are able to accept them BEFORE the capacity is reached.

Otherwise, it would be like 635, and be in perpetual construction mode.

[GreyDay]

Originally Posted by skids929

Thats because it's in Jersey

Right across the river. Hoboken has a great view of New York. But it's not New York.

[GreyDay]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

This is also the reason (IMHO) that McKinney school scores are slightly lower than some of the surrounding burbs. There is a lot more older housing stock in McKinney; much of which dates back to the time of southen segregation in the original town compared to the other burbs. The others have the vast majority of their housing stock from the last two or three decades, the 1960s at the earliest. This gives McKinney a higher percentage of lower income students than neighboring areas and thus some lower scores on average. But the differences are slight when viewed in this context.

My kids have all excelled in McKinney ISD, even at the HS level. I don't think any of them would have fared better in life going to one of the Plano high schools compared to McKinney. There are SO many more factors involved in education than average test scores of a whole school, parental involvement and values the number one factor above all.

I don't know of any school in Collin County that a well adjusted child could not maximize to their benefit. I cannot say this about all schools in other counties in the metro area.

You realize the correlation between test scores and SES is only so strong right? Blame the poor kids, seems simple, if only it were correct. Waiting for the next installment from the Journal of Anectdotal Evidence.

[Saintmarks]

Originally Posted by GreyDay

You realize the correlation between test scores and SES is only so strong right? Blame the poor kids, seems simple, if only it were correct. Waiting for the next installment from the Journal of Anectdotal Evidence.

Show me the average household income of Southlake, West Plano and Highland Park, the schools that continuously get listed on this site as the pinnacle of DFW public education, and publish that in your Journal of Holier-Than-Thou one liners.

[synchronicity]

Originally Posted by GreyDay

You realize the correlation between test scores and SES is only so strong right? Blame the poor kids, seems simple, if only it were correct. Waiting for the next installment from the Journal of Anectdotal Evidence.

Well, FWIW, although I don't completely agree with Saintmarks here, when I ran a CORREL between average campus SAT score and %age economically disadvantaged students, for every non-magnet public high school in DFW, I got a correlation coefficient of about -.885. That's an insanely high correlation. I ran a simple linear regression as well and got an R^2 of .78.

It's a really, REALLY strong correlation when you look at groups as large as several hundred plus, which is the size of high school graduating classes in DFW for the most part. The reasons behind that, of course, are many and varied and would be an ongoing debate on a forum dedicated just to that topic.

Having said that, Saintmarks' comments are hurt by the fact that the %ages of economically disadvantaged in McKinney are actually the same or lower than, for example, Plano East.

Look, I've got a friggin' spreadsheet from all my research before we bought, and nothing else to do with it than use it on internet discussion forums. Humor me.

[GreyDay]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

Show me the average household income of Southlake, West Plano and Highland Park, the schools that continuously get listed on this site as the pinnacle of DFW public education, and publish that in your Journal of Holier-Than-Thou one liners.

You can't just automatically assume that the poorer kids, the 'apartment' kids are the reason a particular school isn't doing well. Just because a school doesn't fare well on SAT's - unless you are privy to test scores by SES, you can't make that call. You just can't automatically assume it's the apartment kids bringing the average down.

It's a dangerous sentiment to have, one that hopefully children don't pick up on.

Glad you mentioned SL, WP, HP. Is it that the kids are smarter? Or the parents are more involved? More stay at home moms to devote effort to struggling kids? Parents are likelier to be college educated? Or is it simply the air of living in an affluent suburb that grows the kids' brains?

It's more that from my personal and professional dealings with DISD I choose to defend it. A child cna be educated in DISD, yes and a ton in Dallas are. The magnets are top locallly and nationally ranked (and these aren't rich kids here either). It's just this attitude that once someone moves out of DISD to the suburbs, they trash it relentlessly. I've heard this from more than once school official.

“We deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage” – Ayn Rand

[PlanoGirl]

Originally Posted by synchronicity

Look, I've got a friggin' spreadsheet from all my research before we bought, and nothing else to do with it than use it on internet discussion forums. Humor me.

You're funny I love it!

[Sushi cake]

There is nothing wrong with McKinney but if you are more house for your buck crowd then why stop there, just keep driving and value of your buck keeps increasing. One thing that boggles me is that their demographics are not any lower then East Plano or Richardson yet their schools don't perform nearly as well.

[Saintmarks]

Originally Posted by Sushi cake

There is nothing wrong with McKinney but if you are more house for your buck crowd then why stop there, just keep driving and value of your buck keeps increasing. One thing that boggles me is that their demographics are not any lower then East Plano or Richardson yet their schools don't perform nearly as well.

I am not in a place right now to do a bunch of research, let's let Synchronicity do it with his spread sheet..... but.... there is nothing I have seen anywhere in Plano or Richardson that correlates to the large older east side of McKinney, the east of the tracks McKinney. It is now a much smaller percentage of the overall town as the boom has gone on west of 75. This is an area of blight... older dilapidated homes dating back decades to the era of segregation. This isn't apartment kids.

I believe you would find a larger number of disadvantaged kids in the McKinney high schools because of this part of town. The ISD zoned all three high schools on an east to west zone so that all three would pick up an equal amount of kids from these poorer areas. They could have dumped them all with McKinney High and let Boyd be nothing but the new swanky neighborhoods on the west side. You would have a high school with a demographic much more akin to West Plano if you did this.

As a parent in the system and a resident of the city, I for one am glad they did not zone this way.