Relocating from Houston, Texas with many questions!

[trackstar13]

To sum up my previous posts, the Pittsburgh suburbs are among the least diverse places in the entire U.S. and I would not reccomend living in the suburbs if you would like any level of diversity and good schools. With that being said, if you are okay with very little diversity, and mostly accepting residents than many of the suburbs mentioned by previous posters should work for you. There may be a few idiots and isolated incidents of racism, but I do agree with the other posters in that these are very isolated incidents in the upper, middle class suburbs of the North and South Hills areas of Pittsburgh.

[okaydorothy]

Originally Posted by Hopes

I always forget that you're REAL irish.

Since this is an area where a large percentage of residents are of Irish descent, it always cracks me up to read your comments that you're Irish.

I think, "yeah, so am I, big deal!" Then I remember you're truly Irish! LOL

LOL. but I have the accent!! Both of our mothers are still alive and kicking at home and all our siblings live either there or in England so we go across the pond at least once a year. My dh is going in a few weeks for the third time this year!! Its more of a project now since we live here, but the flight connections make it interesting. We all have dual citizenship which is great for our kids as they get older. They will have a choice to live here or in 27 European countries.

[wmkeast52]

Originally Posted by track2514

Here are some other school rankings you might want to check out:

1) Upper St. Clair
2) Fox Chapel
3) Mt. Lebanon
4) North Allegheny
5) Pine Richland

America

As others have mentioned, many of the top schools in Pittsburgh do not have very much diversity. As my addition to this thread, I might add checking out North Allegheny since it is a suburban district with a little diversity. I believe it is about 90 white, 8% Asian, 1% African-American, and 1% Hispanic.

North Allegheny School District - Diversity in the Classroom - The New York Times

Are these ranking based on performance or diversity? If they are based on performance, the rankings are different according to the latest PBT school rankings. They are based on PSSA scores alone and are as follows:

1) Upper St. Clair
2) Mt. Lebanon
3) North Allegheny
4) Hampton Township
5) South Fayette
6) Fox Chapel
7) Peters Township
8) Quaker Valley
9) Franklin Regional
10) Penn-Trafford

Latest U.S. News and World Reports national rankings of nearly 22,000 high schools are as follows .

1) Mt. Lebanon - 557
2) Upper St. Clair - 604
3) Hampton Township - 771
4) Peters Township - 780
5) North Allegheny - 928
6) Blackhawk - 955
7) Neshannock Junior Senior High in Lawrence County - 1, 067
8) Fox Chapel - 1,121
9) South Fayette - 1,461

My understanding is that Upper St. Clair and North Allegheny have penalties in place for poor performance on PSSA tests. Mt. Lebanon does not but will in the future. The U.S. News and World Reports considers more when evaluating school performance. The U.S. News and World Report rankings tell me that the Pittsburgh area has some pretty damn good schools.

Anyone considering these school districts should go to their websites. You can learn a great deal from reading the various articles. Some, such as Mt. Lebanon, provide the opportunity to go back over several months worth of data to see accomplishments and strategic plans. Good luck in you search!

[BrianTH]

The better schools in this area are indeed quite good, and as we have been discussing, there are more good schools than score rankings alone would suggest, since a number of schools have a higher percentage of disadvantaged students, and if you adjust for that factor many of those schools are also doing quite well. Collectively, all these better schools cover quite a bit of territory, and a lot of different sorts of neighborhoods, price points, and so forth. And there are even more schools which may not be quite as good, but still count as at least decent by normal U.S. standards.

Unfortunately our worst schools are also quite bad, and that is a very serious problem we should be doing more to address. But if you are a newcomer to the region, the bottomline is you have a LOT of good choices available based on public school quality.