<p>Talk to me about it when you live in the Dallas city limits (which I no longer do- YAY)</p>
<p>Re Dallas.</p>
<p>The stellar public schools in the Dallas area are in very high income school districts where nearly all students go to college (like Highland Park, think Pres. Bush). The public Magnet schools in math, science and Arts (think Nora Jones) are excellent and “ranked.”</p>
<p>There are several superior private prep schools. But keep in mind that St Marks usually has only 85-90 in a graduating class so these small private schools provide only a small group of students with this education.</p>
<p>As to the ACT v. SAT, College Board now has opened a Texas office. SAT is the predominate test. In fact, the Dallas newspapers list the National Merit results but I’m not aware of ever seeing the ACT scores reported.</p>
<p>National competitions like Math Counts etc have a huge participation from the Dallas elite private prep schools. There are certain public schools (several in Houston) that actually use the school day to prep their state and national competitors.</p>
<p>Having gone to Highland Park in the 1960’s (and now living in Preston Hollow) and having had my S just graduate from St Marks in 2007, I can tell you that the amount of money, existing resourses and parental support that goes into these schools does, and darn well should, produce uber capable students. But keep in mind there is selectivity based on ability at the privates and ecomonic and educational headstarts at the Highland Parks that really take them out of any fair assessment of the overall “heath” of the Texas public school system.</p>
<p>My SIL is a 20 year+ Texas public school teacher (Dallas ISD and now San Antonio ISD). She tells the tales of the trenches and nearly cried when she attended events at ST Marks. We had over 25% of the Sr. Class for both my S’s grade (2007) and this year make National Merit Semifinalist and over 60% of those classes were either Semifinalists or Commended. It should come as no surprise that they are able to handle college since the competition level and financial wherewithall of those school is comparable with elite colleges.</p>
<p>what a shock! oh, wait a minute isn’t texas the state of ‘no child left behind’ and george, the knucklehead.</p>
<p>07Dad- SMS is also where my son attended and daughter went to Hockaday. I would not send a kid to Highland Park, despite the strong academics. I feel the same way about Plano. I think the social pressures are MUCH worse than at the private schools and the competition more cutthroat.</p>
<p>07Dad,</p>
<p>GWB didn’t go to Highland Park HS, did he?</p>
<p>No he did not. His daughters went to Hockaday while they lived in Dallas.</p>
<p>Well, I have to put in a plug for the wonderful Catholic Schools in Dallas, especially Ursuline Academy, the all-girls HS where Melinda Gates went to school!</p>
<p>curiousmother</p>
<p>No. He lived there as an adult, during his Ranger ownership I think. He’s a member of HP United Meth church located on the edge of the SMU campus. His library is almost assured to be at SMU (University Park, but in the HP ISD). There are “Bush” rumors about him purchasing a home in HP for post-pres life. Mrs. B taught elmentary school at Bradfield in the HPISD (where I went in the 1950’s), I think at least as a student teacher. The Bush girls attended Hockaday. And, Mrs. B comes to visit M/M Jim Francis (HP 66) with some frequency and eats at the Goff’s across from SMU.</p>
<p>My S would always try out for the one act plays the girls put on at Ursuline. Looks like they finally acquired the property at Walnut Hill and Inwood and can expand some.</p>
<p>My S is a grad of St.Mark’s, class of "04. In his class of 82, 7 were accepted to Yale; 6 matriculated, 5 to Harvard, 3 to Dartmouth, 4 to Penn, 1 to Brown, 1 to Cornell, 3 to Stanford, 1 to Princeton. 2 to MIT (one of whom also turned down Cal Tech) These were not overlapping acceptances as they all matriculated other than the Yale and Cal Tech admissions mentioned above. 18 were NMS Semi-finalists and 18 were finalists. </p>
<p>The best public school system in Texas, Highland Park, had 7 NMS semifinalists that year. My D had a friend at SMS class of '06 who struggled to get C’s and transferred to Highland Park as a junior and was an A student. There IS a difference even with the best public schools. We made many sacrifices to provide the St. Mark’s education but have no regrets. St.Mark’s annual fund will ALWAYS find a nice donation from this family as long as I am able to do so.</p>
<p>Eadad, while you speak the truth, people who are not familiar with the inner workings of the school will rarely admit the factual evidence. </p>
<p>In addition, the differences at the very top are blurrier. Public schools in Dallas and Texas do graduate students who are accepted and do well at the most selective schools. So comparing the very top of St. Marks Class of 2004 to Highland Park’s or Plano’s is not as important as looking at the second, third, and fourth quartiles. </p>
<p>That is where the real stories are told.</p>
<p>FWIW, I think some folks are missing a broader point or two when they “score” a school by how many kids go to ivies. first, UT, (as well as T A&M and T Tech) are widely recognized in Texas (and out of state, too) as excellent institutions. second, the further away you get from the northeast, the more unusual the crowd is that is enthralled `by an athletic conference known as the Ivy league.</p>
<p>if you look at middle and upper middle class kids from Texas, they hold their own against the rest of the country.</p>
<p>I will gladly join the chorus of posters who have sons who graduated from St Marks. It was worth every penny it cost, there was a “flexibility” for those boys to seek out knowledge and life experiences that doesn’t exist anywhere I am aware of in the public school system and, for all the unbelievable extremes in the economic circumstances of the students, it produced extraodinary graduates across the board. </p>
<p>The teachers referred to it as “Edutopia” and I think it is. FWIW–I’d re-live puberty if I could go back and attend St Marks.</p>
<p>But for those not so fortunate to attend a St Marks, what does the “average” Texas public school education provide? Using SAT’s (which skews the results since it self-selects those wanting to go to college), Texas high school students overall “measure” average to lower average.</p>
<p>I’m not sure I understand the point about gaining admission to the flagship state universities vs. the Ivies since there is the 10% rule which results in the educational profile of the average student at the flagships being lower than it otherwise would be. </p>
<p>Is anyone really suggesting that all students within the top 10% of Texas public high schools are equally well educated? I assume that a Texas HS graduate who does well at an Ivy will do well at UT. And those who do well at either will be well educated. </p>
<p>Comparing “C” graduates from the Ivies and the flagships might have some relevance but there are so few students at the Ivies that it may not mean much. Comparing “C” level graduates from state flagships across the country might be most relevant in assessing HS preparation.</p>
<p>As an aside, proudly St Marks is a little UN as far as diversity and there is no question that “diversity” coupled with academic excellence has assisted in getting into the Ivies in the last decade.</p>
<p>07DAD</p>
<p>I can’t tell you how many times I have said that I would have done ANYTHING to go St. Mark’s…or even to a school somewhat like it…there were none in the city in Ohio that I grew up in.</p>
<p>There isn’t enough space to tell stories of the passion and heart of the teachers there that regularly go SO far beyond to educate, nurture and develop the men that they graduate. I know my son would not be the man he is today without St.Mark’s.</p>
<p>Wow…what a big St. Marks fan club we have here. I bet I know some of the parents y’all know.</p>
<p>I work in downtown Dallas. When we hire folks from out of town, they always say, “Where do I buy a house so that I can live close to the office and still send my kids to public schools?” My answer is always that unless you can afford Highland Park, nowhere. Suburbs, yes…Coppell, Grapevine-Colleyville, Southlake Carroll…great public school systems, but not close to downtown Dallas.</p>
<p>I will say that the Texas legislature is trying its best to ruin our public schools…every session they do something more boneheaded than the last. Thank goodness they only meet every other year. Last year for the first time I seriously considered private schools.</p>
<p>missypie said:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>DON’T FIGHT THE FEELING!!!</p>
<p>If you have a S, run, don’t walk, to apply to St Marks! </p>
<p>I had serious doubts about private school until my S’s TAG teacher at UP elementary in 2nd grade said “get him out of here and into SM before junior high; we have nothing to offer him.”</p>
<p>missypie</p>
<p>Really not trying to turn this into a St. Marks’ Admiration Society…but…</p>
<p>The school districts you mention are indeed reputed to be very good but when the list of National Merit Semifinalists comes out each year, you will be as surprised as I was when I saw how few those schools produced…single digits from classes with 400 plus students or more. Even Plano West with 1700 plus students in the senior class only had 40 some semifinalists and around 50% had Asian surnames.</p>
<p>My son’s senior year we were excited about 19 of 82 reaching Semifinalist status plus an additional 23 gaining “commended” status. Subsequent classes have yielded 25% of the class or more as semifinalists. They all haven’t had quite the same HYPS matriculation rate but nonetheless are all at very fine schools. The education a boy receives there and the preparation for college are second to none.</p>
<p>Anecdotally, a good friend’s D was Salutatorian at one of the area’s “top” public schools …a very highly regarded school, and is now a senior at Penn. During freshman year, her parents repeatedly told us of her struggle to adjust to the workload especially the amount of required writing. If memory serves me right, the English classes my son was in required a two to three page paper EVERY Monday, every week every year from freshman through senior year. When they graduate, they CAN write and are not overstressed by the workload. My S’s best friend was a freshman at Penn at the same time along with many others from SM before and after him. All we have ever heard is how incredibly well prepared they were and that the junior and senior year at SM was harder and more intense/rigorous than freshman year almost anywhere. </p>
<p>As Xiggi said, even the middle tier students who graduate from SM have no problems easily adapting to the rigors of most schools and in most cases go on to excel.</p>
<p>You are right about the paltry numbers of NMSF…every year I’m astounded at how few we have. This year the school made a huge push to get the 9th and 10th graders to take the PSAT…I assume it was to try to identify those who might come close to NMSF status.</p>
<p>I can only tie it to the quality of education the kids receive. Out by us, there are no St. Marks or Hockadays to lure away the brightest students; I don’t know a soul in my neighborhood who drives their kids in to those schools. (The kids at our nearby private schools tend to be there for religious reasons.) So, I assume that our public schools do house the “brightest and best” from our community, yet only 3 or 4 out of a class of 600 or so make NMSF.</p>
<p>Every year, I have this National Merit debate with a good friend who has her children at St. Agnes and Strake. (Mine attend a super-sized public in Far NW Harris County.) She teases me relentlessly when the numbers come out…‘how can your huge h.s. of 4000 students only produce a dozen NMF when teeny tiny Strake produces twice that number?’ The answer is Strake has stringent admissions criteria and a student body determined by self selection where those who choose to attend are among the brightest in Houston. Of course they are going to have a high percentage of high achievers. </p>
<p>But that being said, I am so sick of how public education is handled in the State of Texas…from the twin abominations of the Robin Hood law and the Top Ten Per Cent Law to the ‘teaching to the test’ strategies that literally obsess our administrators. My son just had a major exam plus a state exam in every single class this week. Of course, he didn’t bother preparing for the state exams…they are so remedial it’s ridiculous. It’s embarrassing when I hear of our state leaders patting themselves on the back for the astronomically high pass rates on these tests. What a joke.</p>
<p>We DO have excellent instruction at our high school…at the upper levels. Both of my kids have had phenomenal teachers in the AP and Gifted classes they have taken. Classes are tough, kids learn and do well on the AP exams. My d’s class of 2006 sent kids to Harvard, Dartmouth, West Point, WUSTL, UNC-CH, Duke, Vandy, UT-Plan II, etc… We do have sharp kids who push themselves. Unfortunately, in our district, they get no extra weighting for these classes which seems to send the message that what the teachers and students accomplish is not exceptional or meaningful. </p>
<p>Bottom line…from every angle, in Texas, we have a system hell-bent on catering to the lowest common denominator.</p>
<p>Yeah Texas!!! The legislation just added “under God” to the Texas pledge we have to say every day in school. Does it sound stuppy or not? “I pledge allegience to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible”. How silly is that?
FWIW…My kids went to the same (public) high school that the Bush twins went to, and the same school that the governor’s kids went to. It is a mixed bag economically, socially and racially. The bathrooms are abysmal, the architecture ugly and old, and I’m sure the Bush girls were SHOCKED after attending Hockaday. Still, my kids had some terrific teachers, as well as some not so terrific. They are not struggling at their top-25 private U.</p>
<p>ldmom06 - I do have to commend St. Agnes, Strake and St. Thomas for huge strides they’ve made over the years to improve their curriculum and diversity. I’d say the majority of classmates I had at St. Agnes were there mostly because Catholic parents wanted their child to attend a Catholic school instead of being ‘corrupted’ by the public schools. Out of a graduating class of around 120, I remember less than a handful of my classmates being non-Catholic. Over the years, as academics became more rigorous and these schools began to be recognized as respectable academic institutions, more and more students fell in the ‘non’ Catholic demographic. In fact, I remember reading in my alumni magazine that there are now students of non-Christian faiths attending St. Agnes, mostly due to its rigorous academics. There were probably 2-3 blacks in my graduating class, a few hispanics, and the rest caucasian. I look at pictures from the alumni magazine now, and it seems as if caucasians are in the minority. </p>
<p>This doesn’t mean that we didn’t have bright, intelligent girls in my class, but the extremes of abilities were greater. There were many, many girls who probably would not be admitted under today’s standards (I’m probably one of them - I bloomed later in life!). It’s inspirational to see how it has evolved into such a sought-after school, whose mission is to educate young women for demanding careers, instead of just providing a sanctuary for Catholic families.</p>
<p>We live less than two miles from the only Catholic school in our county, and although it has an excellent reputation, we, too, chose to send our kids to the public school, which does not have such an excellent reputation. However, our public school offers many more AP classes than the private school, as well as many more ECs. I truly believe my kids got the better ‘education’ at our public school. So I do believe that bright kids can exceed at public schools, even ones that are not in the wealthiest, toniest suburbs.</p>
<p>The one thing people often forget about public schools when comparing them to privates is that the publics are mandated to provide an education for everyone. I suspect that many of them, if they were able to reject the less motivated, less engaged, and IEP students, they would have the same accomplishments as most privates.</p>