One of the most frequently questions I get as a realtor is about Austin schools.
Parents moving to Austin want to know what kind of school their child
will be going to after their house purchase. Additionally investors or buyers
interested in resale are interested because they realize the school district
will play a role in their ability to sell their house. Below is a list of all the schools in the Austin area along with their Accountability ratings. We also have a link with home statistics and a home search for the school area.
The school ratings should be taken with a grain of salt. Take Anderson in 2006.
Anderson was rated as one of the top schools in America
by Newsweek, but was given a rate of unacceptable
by Texas. What happened? Well the way Texas ranks schools
is it breaks the students into multiple categories
and the groups are given ratings. The lowest rated group
determines the school ratings. So at Anderson the subgroup
of special education students who are given an alternate form of the test received a rating of unacceptable
rating and therefore the entire school receives a rating of
unacceptable even if other groups were rated as exemplary. By
comparison a school where all the categories of students received
acceptable would be given a rating of acceptable. Even though
if you compared the average of the two schools Anderson would
score much higher. Basically the accountability ratings are used
to alter behavior. So that schools don't discount or ignore certain
categories of students. While that is a noble goal, it makes the ratings less helpful for parents
trying to discover the general strengths or weaknesses of
different schools in a school district.
Below is how different high schools in the Austin area faired with the SAT; it includes: their main Austin MLS areas, the percent of students who took the SAT, and their average test score. I realize that some people don't like the standardized tests and feel they are biased and/or they are a poor indicator of future success. I tend to agree. But in the absence of something better here are a bunch of test scores. They are ranked by SAT performance (out of 1600 as best).
Ok so if you skipped all the data. What is my short opinion of the schools?
Westlake used to have the reputation as the far
and away the best school in Austin.
Westlake was kind of the original and most expensive suburb of Austin.
As people have started
moving central other schools have risen to compete with Westlake. These include
Anderson, Austin and Mccallum. Bowie and Johnston are in the next tier of schools.
The rest of the schools are in the bottom.
