DFW High Schools ranked by SAT 2012-2013 (Houston, Dallas: renting, best schools)

[TX75007]

Originally Posted by Lakewooder

So long as nobody is threatening or harming anyone, there's no reason you cannot go to school with them. If you're a high achiever and they aren't, most likely you will be in different classes most of the time. Some of the things which happened during integration the 70s at Woodrow were somewhat provocative but nobody pulled their kids out of school. "Apartment people" is not a term I hear in our area.

I saw quite a bit of hazing and bullying in Middle School and HS of my geeky friends. I played varsity football and got the bullies to knock it off in 10th grade when I found out about it. But the damage was done. My HS GF was severely traumatized by the hazing in MS and it took years of therapy to help her. She is now a highly ranked physician. She still hates this part of her life. It just takes a few of these incidents for parents to move their kids. A dozen kids moving and there goes the NMSF rankings and the incentives or ability to have advanced classes.

My black friends on the football team who were smart only came into their own in college. Many had parents (and friends) who publicly accused them of becoming "white" when they started reading for pleasure or wanting to do well in class. They could memorize the entire playbook the first week but dared not be caught with Shakespeare. OR get 100s on the math test. Calculus? OMG. No way.

And these were really good schools.

I cannot imagine what it is like at poorer schools.

The culture in a lot of homes and communities is self-destructive and this is what has to change. From single parent families to drug use to alcoholism to mental instability to persistently poor choices. We spend a ton or resources on the kids, but the two most important factors are peers and expectations.

What also has to change are the polyannas who do not see this going on. Problems have to be identified and taken head on.

[Vicman]

Gator, I like to set up my posts with "if-else" statements, such as "If Woodrow in fact does not have the "hardcore" ones (or even if those who are just drop out and don't bother anyone else), good." to take into account things in case these "hardcore" students don't, in fact, exist at Woodrow (and I would be glad to hear they don't exist there or at JL Long). While any issues on elementary school level frustrate teachers in middle school, a lot of the problems really start in middle school and Geib makes it clear in his writings.

The East Dallas community should be upholding an egalitarian mission to educate children in all social classes. I have stated that kids who work hard, the ones Geib praises in his essays and writings, are the ones who add value. But do the "already gone" ones who say "everyone else can kiss my ass" add value to the community? Consider what TX75007 wrote. Geib wrote about the same thing, how there was peer pressure against being good in academics at some schools. The "everyone else can kiss my ass" kids contribute to that. Does that not harm an entire school and its community?

If there are any fears that harrassing "hardcore" gang members etc. "sounds like a legacy of Jim Crow era and is so not what East Dallas is about" I think videotapes of these students disrupting classrooms and/or proof of students committing crimes in their areas would be enough to remedy that in the community's eyes. The homeowners in Fondren Southwest in the 1990's had no qualms having apartments with high crime being shut down near them.

Geib had stated here: http://rjgeib.com/biography/inner-ci...es/reply2.html

I found "187" to be a perspective about gangs and gangmembers which often borders on caricature. However, there is a lot of truth to it also and that is good since we get so many "feel good" movies these days which try not to "offend" or "stigmatize" anyone (ie. "Dangerous Minds" - a pretty shallow movie). Take "187" and blend it with "Stand and Deliver" and maybe you will get an approximation of the truth worthy of such a complex and weighty issue. If you left the movie theater feeling very ill at ease, good. The issue is that serious, and liberal "we just need to understand their pain and give them a hug" ideas won't cut it. There does exist evil in this world which is not a mere result of circumstance and error. That is what my years of hanging around LA in a variety of different capacities has taught me. Jackson's character taught his most important lessons to his nemesis there at the end playing Russian roulette, and probably no other method would have proved efficacious. There was a strange power in that final scene which struck at the teacher's heart in me, as the earlier rediculousness of killing his students did not.

There really are people who only listen to violence and force, and clearly cannot be reformed. That was one of the points the 187 movie was making. It's true that many of them drop out in high school anyway, but it's clear there should be no hesitation in getting rid of that type of "student" from regular high schools. Geib mentions "Gresham's Law" in his statement:

That the good does not always win out over the evil, and the power of Gresham's law where the bad in a certain dynamic eventually drives out the good as things get worse and worse. After all, how many individuals with a gun and a "mad dog" attitude does it take to make a neighborhood or classroom unlivable?

Originally Posted by Gator-in-Steiner

Vicman - your comments seem completely off the mark. I think most parents in this feeder pattern want all of the elementary schools to have students performing at as high a level as Lakewood and Stonewall. This would make our middle and high school stronger. Parents, teachers and administrators are working hard to collaborate across the schools to fill in the gaps where needed. LECPTA and the Woodrow Wilson Community Foundation are providing donations to more than just Lakewood to support this mission. Harassing people to have them leave the area sounds like a legacy of Jim Crow era and is so not what East Dallas is about.

[BabyDoctor77]

Wow..these numbers are impressive..Hockaday and St. Marks blow Highland Park High out of the water!!!

[Aceraceae]

Originally Posted by BabyDoctor77

Wow..these numbers are impressive..Hockaday and St. Marks blow Highland Park High out of the water!!!

Not surprising. Those are very selective schools.

[WarmIce]

Originally Posted by BabyDoctor77

Wow..these numbers are impressive..Hockaday and St. Marks blow Highland Park High out of the water!!!

Lol! Highlandpark High is an open enrollment school. They have advantage of a student body with affluent and educated families, yet they MUST take in everyone who moves into their district. Private schools can say no to anyone, with exception of a small number of applicants, bringing in big donations or useful connections with them.

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by BabyDoctor77

Wow..these numbers are impressive..Hockaday and St. Marks blow Highland Park High out of the water!!!

Hence, why you really can't evaluate private schools and public schools in the same thread. HP is a public school with graduating classes in the 500 student range vs classes in the 80-100 range at St Mark's and Hockaday. Legally, HPHS must educate every K-12 aged resident. St Mark's and other elite privates are incredibly selective; admitting only 20% or so of applicants in "expansion" years like 5th and 9th. In other grades, the schools can be as choosy as admitting 0-2 out of a pool of 20. Privates can also weed students out who can't keep up academically or who are distractions in class. Both HP and elite privates have elite students who get into Ivy/Stanford caliber schools and score perfect 800's on SAT sections; however the "average" student at St Mark's looks a lot different on paper than the average student at HP. Surely you get that, right??

[bencronin04]

Originally Posted by Aceraceae

Not surprising. Those are very selective schools.

Originally Posted by WarmIce

Lol! Highlandpark High is an open enrollment school. They have advantage of a student body with affluent and educated families, yet they MUST take in everyone who moves into their district. Private schools can say no to anyone, with exception of a small number of applicants, bringing in big donations or useful connections with them.

Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80

Hence, why you really can't evaluate private schools and public schools in the same thread. HP is a public school with graduating classes in the 500 student range vs classes in the 80-100 range at St Mark's and Hockaday. Legally, HPHS must educate every K-12 aged resident. St Mark's and other elite privates are incredibly selective; admitting only 20% or so of applicants in "expansion" years like 5th and 9th. In other grades, the schools can be as choosy as admitting 0-2 out of a pool of 20. Privates can also weed students out who can't keep up academically or who are distractions in class. Both HP and elite privates have elite students who get into Ivy/Stanford caliber schools and score perfect 800's on SAT sections; however the "average" student at St Mark's looks a lot different on paper than the average student at HP. Surely you get that, right??

These are all completely on point. I would also like to point out that some of those kids that get weeded out end up at HPHS due to the parents wanting the best education they can get for their children outside of private. HPHS also has a lot of things to offer in terms of extracurricular activities that some of the privates cannot match. It's been awhile(with the exception of Jesuit) since I've hear of many pro athletes coming out of St. Marks, Hockaday or Greenhill.

[TX75007]

Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80

admitting only 20% or so of applicants in "expansion" years like 5th and 9th. In other grades, the schools can be as choosy as admitting 0-2 out of a pool of 20. Privates can also weed students out who can't keep up academically or who are distractions in class. Both HP and elite privates have elite students who get into Ivy/Stanford caliber schools and score perfect 800's on SAT sections; however the "average" student at St Mark's looks a lot different on paper than the average student at HP. Surely you get that, right??

Not to mention the dreaded "probie" status in privates and the DORs.

While the privates are impressive on a % basis, more impressive is that while the privates can fill one class with NMSF finalists, Plano can fill several classrooms. Ie while St Marks may have 80 kids, plano will have hundreds.

[Transplanted99]

Originally Posted by Ramona72

And here's the latest post on that data blog. TAG's SAT including the non-poor kids was 1917, but just the poor kids had the same score as HP as a whole. I think that's just awesome. (And no, I'm not saying that DISD as a whole is great and yes, I realize that this is the cream of DISD's poor, etc.)

2012 - Average SAT Scores of Poor Students in Dallas-Fort Worth Area

This is a list of average SAT scores of economically disadvantaged students in Dallas area high schools. These are students who qualify for the free and reduced lunch program and are typically a challenging group to educate. The scores include all three sections of the SAT - math, reading and writing. Each section has a max score of 800, with a total max score of 2400.

Some schools like Highland Park, Argyle, Lovejoy, Sunnyvale, Carroll and Westlake don't have enough low income students (if they have any at all) to have an average for this category, so you won't see those schools on this list.

Source: Texas Education Agency

Average SAT Scores Poor Students - School (District ISD/charter)

1796 - Talented/Gifted magnet (Dallas)
1725 - Science/Engineering magnet (Dallas)

1634 - Flower Mound (Lewisville)

1572 - Liberty (Frisco)
1558 - Collegiate (Cedar Hill)
1555 - Coppell (Coppell)

1524 - Keller (Keller)
1518 - Plano West (Plano)
1513 - Rockwall (Rockwall)
1502 - Law magnet (Dallas)
1500 - Heritage (Frisco)

1499 - Global (Waxahachie)
1496 - Rangel girls school (Dallas)
1494 - Centennial (Frisco)
1494 - FW Academy of Fine Arts (charter)

Are these really great scores?

This guy here says that you ought to have 2100 to have a reasonable expectation of getting accepted at a top tier university.

Bell Curves Blog - SAT scores: When another 50 (or 100) points makes no difference

Don't know the answer to that, and do realize that these are average scores with some percentile punching above 2100. Of course, the spread could vary significantly between schools too.

[Vicman]

Originally Posted by bencronin04

These are all completely on point. I would also like to point out that some of those kids that get weeded out end up at HPHS due to the parents wanting the best education they can get for their children outside of private. HPHS also has a lot of things to offer in terms of extracurricular activities that some of the privates cannot match. It's been awhile(with the exception of Jesuit) since I've hear of many pro athletes coming out of St. Marks, Hockaday or Greenhill.

That's why most private schools have their own special sports league. What is interesting is how Dallas Jesuit and Strake (in Houston) got kicked out of the private league, so they play with public schools.