Ranking Alief Schools
Filed under Alief and Alief ISD
Channel 13 today carried a story about a ranking of area schools by the organization, Children At Risk. Check out the link: http://www.childrenatrisk.org//cmsFiles/Files/2007%20H.S.%20Rankings.pdf
Today’s publication of ranking of area schools is good news and bad news for the Alief ISD. Alief Kerr is ranked No. 11 in the Greater Houston area. Now that is good news. The problem is that Kerr is a small school which serves only a small percentage of area students. No doubt AISD will spare no expense in beating the publicity drums regarding the status of Kerr. If only that were the whole story.
Sadly, the rest of the Alief high schools did not fare so well. Taylor High School, the next Alief high school to be ranked, comes in at Number 53. That means that 52 – count them – 52 area high schools ranked ahead of Taylor. Bush High School is itself in the Mission Bend community and is in the Fort Bend ISD, comes in at No. 43. Now before the Alief district spokespeople atart their story line about poverty and all the standard excuses for poor performance in the district, note that many of the schools to rank ahead of Taylor themselves are in neighborhoods with notably low socio-economic status. That means, in plain English, that they are in poor neighborhoods too. To add insult to injury, Alief Hastings comes in at No. 58 while Elsik brings up the rear at No. 65. It adds salt to this wound to remember that Hastings not too long ago was considered one of the stellar schools in the Greater Houston Area. People actually moved to Alief to get their children in Hastings. My, how times have changed.
I guess the only consolation in this report is that the Alief schools were not in the bottom group, which goes to No. 97. Small consolation. And we wonder why so many families with awareness of the issues of public education choose to locate in surrounding communities, such as Katy, rather than to Alief or Mission Bend. I can’t tell you how many times I have been told that an individual would not consider relocating to the Alief area. They don’t want their children in any Alief school. That’s sad.