Does school rankings matter for elementary and middle vs high school?

IMO it's all about peer groups

I'd rather my kids be with mediocre teachers and curriculum in an old, bland established elementary school fed by involved, wholesome (preferably conservative/traditional minded) families than an elementary school being fed by something else even if they're pumping big money and the best teachers into it.

ETA: Elementary schools are smaller and it's easier to assess in my opinion. You want a neighborhood elementary school fed by a strong, established neighborhood if going public. Middle and HS are when it gets harder to gauge because you're typically pulling from a bigger footprint.

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I'd rather my kids be with mediocre teachers and curriculum in an old, bland established elementary school fed by involved, wholesome (preferably conservative/traditional minded) families

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Agree. Reading to your kids early and often will set them up for early success.

Yes, it matters.

Your kids will model behavior of fellow students be it good or bad.

Burnout teachers often make for less than ideal students.

Good feedback. The elementary school is the lowest rated of the 3 so slightly concerned. I used to teach one at Bryan elementary and thought it was mostly lack of support at home and wasn’t sure how it translates.

School in question:
LINK .

None of us can probably give you much feedback on how to assess WA schools, if we're being honest.

You really have to understand the dynamics of the feeding areas. 35% minority enrollment, reading numbers, etc. will tell SOME story, but that means different things in different regions.

For example, if you took the numbers of Lake Highlands High in Dallas, you'd probably avoid. But some of those numbers have been the same for years and it's consistently pumped out big school matriculating kids who do very well and who enjoy HS life. You'd have to understand that half the kids live in apartments and half the kids live in established neighborhoods and there has traditionally been minimal overlap to understand how a 50% minority school with bad test results is mostly fine. We have some similar schools in Atlanta.

But, a caveat is that those numbers typically aren't reflected in the elementary levels, because they're neighborhood schools and are only fed by a subset of the HS footprint (ie, mostly apts or mostly SFH in nice areas).

School rankings are weird. Diversity is a criteria in them. I ignore that. For us, we value the HS ranking most so we are in the feeder pattern for the HS with strong college placement scores.

For middle and high school, kids will get out of school what they put in. Even in low to mid ranked schools the kids in the advanced classes will get a good education.

I would look at school demographics as that will be a measure of how violent the school is.

My kids were in advanced classes in mid to low ranked schools and got into good colleges with good scholarships.

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How do you evaluate elementary schools? Isn’t it just glorified daycare?

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You want some shitbag school influencing your child from 5/6 until they are 12?? I'll take top elementary schools all day

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Well daycare didn't teach my kindergartener to read and multiply, his elementary school teacher did.

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PreK-4 at the church, all the kids could read on 1st grade level, add/subtract. Some knew their multiplication tables up to 10.

Texas tries so fricking hard to be coastal elite. shite kickers.