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Parental involvement only helps at home. When children are at school, that is a non factor.
I grew up in Plano. I remember we had a computer lab in 2nd grade (1986.) Back then, that was EXTREMELY rare for a school district to have. I had some friends who lived in Richardson at the time, their school didn't get a computer lab until years later.
There are advantages to living in a suburb that have a strong school district serving them. Parental involvement only goes so far. Socioeconomic success is exactly what we are talking about here, and why people would choose the suburbs over DISD in many cases, because it DOES help performance.
My data, and lots of other data says Socioeconomics is the #1 determining factor for school success in the US. I studied children at publics in Preston Hollow, Lakewood, Forest Hills and North Oak Cliff from high and low socioeconomic backgrounds. Those kids of higher backgrounds were more participatory, their parents were participatory, they were involved in more school activities, and they made better grades. The point is, DISD spends a lot of money and has some wonderful facilities and teachers. There's no reason that children would have less success, and they are not having less success. Schools like Woodrow Wilson and WT White are great examples of this. The same kids achieving at Woodrow Wilson would achieve and Plano West and vice versa. Why parents get caught up in those games, I dunno. I did notice much more confidence in the performance of girls vs boys. I never knew there was such a lack of confidence in white male children by their parents.
Not to mention through my interviews with actual parents(Dallas and suburban, private and public) lots of people fear schools with brown children. Even some parents of "brown" children. I'm talking, frank and honest discussion. Its just an unfortunate truth. People said such things to me on camera, right in my face. I also generally heard lots of defending the school district people's children were in despite evidence to the contrary. Let's face it, we all fear the unknown and what's different.
My data, and lots of other data says Socioeconomics is the #1 determining factor for school success in the US. I studied children at publics in Preston Hollow, Lakewood, Forest Hills and North Oak Cliff from high and low socioeconomic backgrounds. Those kids of higher backgrounds were more participatory, their parents were participatory, they were involved in more school activities, and they made better grades. The point is, DISD spends a lot of money and has some wonderful facilities and teachers. There's no reason that children would have less success, and they are not having less success. Schools like Woodrow Wilson and WT White are great examples of this. The same kids achieving at Woodrow Wilson would achieve and Plano West and vice versa. Why parents get caught up in those games, I dunno. I did notice much more confidence in the performance of girls vs boys. I never knew there was such a lack of confidence in white male children by their parents.
Not to mention through my interviews with actual parents(Dallas and suburban, private and public) lots of people fear schools with brown children. Even some parents of "brown" children. I'm talking, frank and honest discussion. Its just an unfortunate truth. People said such things to me on camera, right in my face. I also generally heard lots of defending the school district people's children were in despite evidence to the contrary. Let's face it, we all fear the unknown and what's different.
Can you expand on this a bit? I'm curious and not sure I totally follow.
My data, and lots of other data says Socioeconomics is the #1 determining factor for school success in the US. I studied children at publics in Preston Hollow, Lakewood, Forest Hills and North Oak Cliff from high and low socioeconomic backgrounds. Those kids of higher backgrounds were more participatory, their parents were participatory, they were involved in more school activities, and they made better grades. The point is, DISD spends a lot of money and has some wonderful facilities and teachers. There's no reason that children would have less success, and they are not having less success. Schools like Woodrow Wilson and WT White are great examples of this. The same kids achieving at Woodrow Wilson would achieve and Plano West and vice versa. Why parents get caught up in those games, I dunno. I did notice much more confidence in the performance of girls vs boys. I never knew there was such a lack of confidence in white male children by their parents.
Not to mention through my interviews with actual parents(Dallas and suburban, private and public) lots of people fear schools with brown children. Even some parents of "brown" children. I'm talking, frank and honest discussion. Its just an unfortunate truth. People said such things to me on camera, right in my face. I also generally heard lots of defending the school district people's children were in despite evidence to the contrary. Let's face it, we all fear the unknown and what's different.
Quoting for agreement. This always seems to fall on deaf ears in favor of the ranking-of-the-week reports.
When did 'brown' become a way to classify people? Not hating on it - as we all commonly use white and black. Just find it amusing. Anyway - just so I'm clear, what does brown include?
Brown People: indian, pakistani, other people from the region, middle easterners, hispanics (all or just from Mexican descent?)
It seems like a lot of DFW business owners and companies keep their offices in the areas close to downtown Dallas like Dallas itself, Irving, Arlington, etc. But most of the affordable family friendly areas are in McKinney, Plano, Frisco, Little Elm, Allen, Wylie, and even further north and east. The commute from Murphy didn't used to be so bad, but it's grown so much that just getting through Murphy during rush hour could take 30 minutes. I realize there are a lot of apartments in the downtown area, and those are great for young single professionals, but my wife and I want the big house with the big yard in the suburbs (and preferably without the commute). It just forces employees to needlessly commute an hour each way in traffic, and office space is much more expensive closer to downtown. My dad's office is in downtown Dallas, and every person commutes to that office from the northern suburbs, one of them all the way from Gainesville! It doesn't make sense - why not relocate to Plano or McKinney?
I am a programmer, and I was fortunate to have my last job be in Plano, and my current job which is a telecommute job. I peruse job listings pretty frequently to see where most of the tech jobs are, and 75% of them seem to be in Dallas, Irving, Arlington, or Richardson.
I'm trying to decide where to live, and most of the houses that are in my price range, have enough squarefeet for a family to be comfortable living in, and are in nice areas seem to be close to 380 or north of 380 (we would like at least 2500 squarefeet but our price range max is $300k). Our favorite houses were way out in Anna, but I'd pretty much be limited to working in McKinney if I wanted a reasonable commute if I lived in Anna.
Talking to people in the area, it seems to be a pretty common theme to live in the northern affordable areas, and commute an hour in traffic south to the areas close to downtown.
Plano seems to be getting a lot of tech jobs recently, and I have an electrical engineer friend whose office is in McKinney - is it a trend for businesses to move their offices further north? If so, I guess I'll just get a house that's in a location with an easy commute (easy commute being 25 mins or less - any more and I think I'd go insane) to Plano in case I have to move on from my current telecommute job. Although I hear many companies will let their employees work from home. My current one does, and the actual office is in Richardson, but I don't know how common it is for tech companies in this area to offer work from home options - and I don't even mind taking a paycut to have this option.
using this same logic, I've wondered for years why people still live in / companies still headquarter in New York City and other north eastern states. Lol I hate the cold and dont understand why we haven't all migrated south yet!
My data, and lots of other data says Socioeconomics is the #1 determining factor for school success in the US. I studied children at publics in Preston Hollow, Lakewood, Forest Hills and North Oak Cliff from high and low socioeconomic backgrounds. Those kids of higher backgrounds were more participatory, their parents were participatory, they were involved in more school activities, and they made better grades. The point is, DISD spends a lot of money and has some wonderful facilities and teachers. There's no reason that children would have less success, and they are not having less success. Schools like Woodrow Wilson and WT White are great examples of this. The same kids achieving at Woodrow Wilson would achieve and Plano West and vice versa. Why parents get caught up in those games, I dunno. I did notice much more confidence in the performance of girls vs boys. I never knew there was such a lack of confidence in white male children by their parents.
Not to mention through my interviews with actual parents(Dallas and suburban, private and public) lots of people fear schools with brown children. Even some parents of "brown" children. I'm talking, frank and honest discussion. Its just an unfortunate truth. People said such things to me on camera, right in my face. I also generally heard lots of defending the school district people's children were in despite evidence to the contrary. Let's face it, we all fear the unknown and what's different.
FWIW, my extremely limited data (average SAT scores for non-magnet metroplex public high schools and %age economically disadvantaged for same publics, circa 2011) came up with a correlation coefficient of about -.87 between those two metrics. IOW, as you decrease the "poor kids" you increase the scores, with an EXTREMELY high correlation at the campus level.
Which arises for dozens of reasons, many of which are also intertwined, but which could be summarized as "academic success is highly correlated with socioeconomic status because socioeconomic status is highly correlated with academic success".
Which is a short way of saying that if YOUR kid, whoever YOU are, were to be taken out of Highachievers ISD and dropped into Fairtomiddlin ISD, they're probably not going to perform much differently in the one than in the other (and vice versa). Sure, they might do a little better in the former than in the latter, but lots of factors at home are incredibly important, and sure, peers help, but by high school a lot of the groundwork for success or not has been laid. But parents who did well academically and carry that to their children (be it through prioritizing resources towards education, instilling good "study habits"/work ethic/discipine/whatever, or just genetically being kinda smarter than average, or any combo of all of those) also tend to be better off financially and therefore more of them choose to live near HighAchievers High (motto "stamp out and abolish redundancy")
I've related this one anecdote many times, but it's one example of what's going on - my wife's parents COMBINED had about 8 grades of education (Mom 3rd, Dad...maybe 5th). My wife's daughter's parents have 36 grades of education between them (college degree and advanced degrees). Even if we assume everything else is equal in terms of commitment to and prioritization of education as well as financial resources to direct towards that, do you kinda think maybe daughter has some advantages mom doesn't? On top of that, no surprise, my wife's parents lived in bad to mediocre parts of town (see "limited education" above), while we've lived in considerably better areas. Because more education has equated to better career opportunities, which ties right back to everything above.
[quote=rantanamo;35046402] The same kids achieving at Woodrow Wilson would achieve and Plano West and vice versa. Why parents get caught up in those games, I dunno. I did notice much more confidence in the performance of girls vs boys. I never knew there was such a lack of confidence in white male children by their parents.
The problem is, with your statement above, the kids at WW (even the very top of the class) are not achieving equally to the kids at Plano West. Look at the NMSF data, look at college matriculation, etc.
I have two extremely bright daughters. One of them, based on initial scores, looks to be a lock for NMSF (the other likely will be too, but she is younger). If I would have put my daughter in DISD (Hillcrest) I am not so confident that she would have achieved the same academic success in high school. Heck, Hillcrest does not have NMSF. Am I so confident that my kid is so much smarter than all of the kids that have gone to Hillcrest the last 10 years- hell no. I don't see her making NMSF if she was at Hillcrest, but I do think she makes it if we moved to PISD.
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Anyway - just so I'm clear, what does brown include? 
