There are pockets where public schools are doing well

Schools are essentially just a product of the students

The idea that some schools are better than others is probably pretty silly to be honest

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but I can’t tell you why.

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I don't know but I will guess that you guys have a lower percentage of single parents.

It’s pockets that are not in the inner cities. This is not rocket science, schools reflect the community in which they are located. People are scared of the truth and until we start stating facts we can’t address the problems.

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By what metric are they excellent?

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Exactly:

By my unscientific reasons, I would assess:

1. percentage of students taking the SAT/ACT score
2. Average SAT/ACT
3. Number of students that have passed AP classes
4. number of national merit semifinalists


note I did not list anything about college matriculation or where they went....

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This is not rocket science, schools reflect the community in which they are located.

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Correct

And for the same reason many Ivy League schools are terribly overrated. They're good because they get the cream of the crop.

Schools manipulate and cheat. For public schools in Louisiana it is all about accountability and getting the highest school performance score. I know of one school that would give a different ACT code to students based on the courses they had taken. Because of the school doing it like this, only the “smart” kids had their ACT scores reported. It really is a shame what is happening now because of accountability. You “target” certain students in a class because they scored in a certain range and you think you can move them to the next tier to get more points. What about the rest of the kids? I could talk for hours about this topic.

This was not always the case!!. Public schools used to work. I am a 76 year old Air Force Brat, reared across the country in public schools through high school.....while there was some variance from VA to CA to IL to FL to OH to LA, my parents (both LSU grads with Master's degrees) felt I was getting well taught. So did I and ended up at MIT and graduated well,solidly in the middle of my class....and I could both write well and do mathproblems

What changed was local control of the schools began to be removed in the 70's and ever increasing Federal and State regulation drove out any notion of serving the needs of the students and fulfilling parents' views and feedback of what should be taught. Education became a poor laboratory for social change and the purpose of education forgotten.

The quality of the product diminished as teachers' unions focused on protecting the teachers and teaching students only to raise the test scores (not very successfully!!) More money was spent on administrators - not teachers - and wasted dollar after wasted dollar produced nothing except increased payrolls.

Just as the nationalization of banking destroyed the quality of the banker - bank - depositor relationship, the nationalization of education has destroyed the quality of the teacher - school -student relationship
Even the quality of private schools has diminished but goes un noticed as they compare so favorably to our rotting public educators.

It's time to destroy the current education model. It's a huge waste of money considering the return.

Start splitting kids at an early age by aptitude

We moved to Houston in June 2013

We chose Katy because of KISD and we chose Tompkins HS because it was new
Both my kids went to catholic school in LA up to 8th and both thrived in the public HS

Great schools link

This area is overwhelmingly middle to upper middle class, predominantly two parents, college educated

The demos are pretty diverse, everything starts in the home, the schools are reflections of the community they serve