Archive for the 'Schools' Category
Are These Real Estate and School Statistics Meaningless?
categories: Alpharetta Real Estate, Schools
A few weeks ago, the AJC Homefinder published an article implying that the SAT scores of an area high school drove the average sales price.
The argument went that Higher SAT Scores => Higher Average Sales Price. The first rule of statistics, other than there is a statistic to prove every point, is that correlation does not prove causation. It is possible for two statistics to be positively, or even negatively, correlated and still have nothing to do with each other.
For instance, many people gain weight as they get older. Does aging cause obesity? Hardly not. Not being active and eating the wrong food causes obesity.
When I read the Homefinder article I immediately thought to myself that the opposite hypothesis was true: Higher Average Sales Price => Higher SAT Scores. It is the classic chicken and egg problem: what came first? Was an area wealthy first and that helped the schools perform well or did the students pull an average area up by its bookpack straps and cause other parents to want to move there, which drove up the home values?
Of course, there really is no "right" answer. The Homefinder was simply trying to put a real estate edge on a topic, because that is what they do: write about real estate to sell newspapers/advertising. But if we really analyze it, good schools are more often than not the result of good community and family situations. That is, families with one stay at home parent, two parent families, stability, discipline, educated parents, involved parents, low crime and violence…you know, family values and community involvement.
To say that schools drive home prices…all we can say is that there is a correlation. What is more accurate, and the title of the Homefinder article, is that schools do "make" the sale. If given a choice to purchase a home in an average or outstanding school district, a family will always pick the outstanding if they can afford it (and find a house they like - or may settle on one they don’t like as much).
The Homefinder article points out that over a hundred homes were sold in one intown school district and only seven in an adjacent district. Clearly schools matter. Schools are the number one thing that prospective buyers in the area ask me about when considering different areas. [Check HERE for more school comparision data.]
And sellers in good school districts, Milton in particular, always want to put a premium on their home because of the "quality of the schools." The numbers below show that the average price in Milton High School district has increased faster than in the other districts.
So, let’s look at some meaningless statistics ;-> The Homefinder article gave average sales price and SAT score for two Gwinnett and Cobb County high schools. Unfortunately they didn’t publish the numbers for North Fulton, so I went and crunched the numbers for all six North Fulton High Schools, just for curiosity’s sake. [Note: If you are interested in average sales price in other high school districts, like Forsyth or Cherokee for instance, just call me and I'll gladly crunch those numbers for you.] Here is what I found for North Fulton High Schools:
Average Home Price and SAT Score by Neighborhood in North Fulton
| School | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | |
| Alpharetta High School | ||||
| Avg. Home Sale | $421,312 | $420,242 | $402,578 | |
| Avg. SAT Score | 1045 | 1596 | 1647 | |
| Centennial High School | ||||
| Avg. Home Sale | $338,386 | $347,722 | $368,874 | |
| Avg. SAT Score | 1104 | 1638 | 1639 | |
| Chattahoochee High School | ||||
| Avg. Home Sale | $355,858 | $391,857 | $378,804 | |
| Avg. SAT Score | 1120 | 1666 | 1654 | |
| Milton High School | ||||
| Avg. Home Sale | $470,740 | $506,144 | $566,015 | |
| Avg. SAT Score | 1114 | 1641 | 1641 | |
| Northview High School | ||||
| Avg. Home Sale | $393,529 | $438,162 | $448,068 | |
| Avg. SAT Score | 1145 | 1670 | 1702 | |
| Roswell High School | ||||
| Avg. Home Sale | $361,958 | $367,418 | $399,384 | |
| Avg. SAT Score | 1097 | 1663 | 1689 | |
Here is my biggest finding: if you look at the price per point of SAT result, the best place to buy a house is in the Northview High School District. There, one SAT point costs you $236.53. How is that for a meaningless statistic? Centennial and Milton have the highest price for a point of SAT at $245 per point. Again, meaningless, but fun to calculate.
It is interesting to see the averages by school district, a number that is not readily available elsewhere, and it shows that the most expensive district to live in (Milton) doesn’t have the highest SAT scores. There are tons of other factors at play here. Bottom line is that all the schools are good and that the housing opportunities are just different in each.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
New Birmingham Elementary School Plan Unveiled and New High School Questioning Begins
categories: Milton Real Estate, Schools
School was in session Tuesday night in the Summit Hill Elementary cafeteria as parents and local residents where instructed on the details of the new elementary school to be built on Birmingham Highway and Wood Road.
About a hundred or so people gathered to learn and ask questions about the new school and while a good bit of the information was mundane, there were a few interesting tidbits. First, the mundane:
- The school will open in August 2009.
- Construction will begin Jan-Feb 2008.
- The design is the standard Fulton County “prototype elementary”. It will be one story with 109,000 sq. ft.
- The school is designed for 850 students in the classrooms. The “core facilities” like the cafeteria and media center are designed for 1000 students in case (for when?) portable classrooms are needed.
- Redistricting will not begin until October 2008 and there will be a series of meetings on the topic at that time.
We already knew most of that stuff. Here is the new stuff what I learned:
- Only 24 of the total 40 acres are going to be developed. A 50 ft buffer will be maintained on the northern side of the site adjacent to White Columns.
- Approximately 200 elementary age children live in White Columns. There is no “connection” currently planned between the school site and the neighborhood. I think it would be great if the neighborhood association and the school board could collaborate to create a gate and pathway of some sort to allow kids to walk/bike to school. It would be good for the kids and good for the roads. This arrangement exists in other parts of North Fulton, for instance between Findley Oaks Elementary School and the Wellington neighborhood.
- Two entrances off Birmingham Highway approximately 650 feet apart are proposed: one for car pool and the other for teachers/staff and buses. No traffic signals are currently planned and the School Board representatives said they defer to the State Department of Transportation on this because Birmingham Highway is a state highway. There was a lot of questioning and concern from the audience about the two proposed entrances, the amount of traffic and the safety of not having traffic lights. [I will note that upon thinking about it, Crabapple Crossing has two entrances probably closer than this with no traffic signals. The traffic does not move as fast on that part of B’ham Highway and they have a traffic officer on site.]
- No access to the school is planned from Wood Road. The only way to get into the school will be from Birmingham Highway. With 200 kids living in White Columns, getting them to the school will be interesting. The only portion of White Columns with access to B’ham Hwy is gated and both Wood Road and Nix Road are dirt. Residents of those dirt roads aren’t going to want White Columns traffic cutting through from Freemanville to B’ham Hwy. White Columns kids living in the original development are going to have to go north to Birmingham Road and over to Birmingham Hwy traveling three or four times as far as the bird would fly.
- The proposed playground space is only 2 acres not including a pad for future portable class rooms if ever needed. Some attendees questioned whether this was enough playground space. At Summit Hill, the lack of playground space is one of the constraints of the facility. It is crazy that on 40 acre sites the kids only get 2 acres of playground space. Let’s take advantage of the space.
- The septic system for the new school is planned for 100,000 gallons and is different from the one at Summit Hill in that it is some sort of anaerobic spray process that also includes a subsurface drain field. Apparently this is more state of the art. The drain field is going to take up a bunch of acres, however, we were told that additional play fields could not be built on top of the drain field because it would cause a change in the soil composition. I find it hard to believe that a bunch of 50 pound bipeds scurrying around kicking a ball is going to affect the dirt that much - and I’m not an engineer either.
New High School Discussed
The more interesting discussion revolved around the new high school proposed to be just east of the elementary school at Wood Road and Freemanville Road.
I thought that School Board member, Katie Reeves, did a great job stating the obvious - and I don’t say that sarcastically. I think that people forget that if public decisions were easily made we’d never have any controversy and we’d have a smoothly running society. We wouldn’t be fighting a war in Iraq; there would be no homeless people and everyone would have access to adequate health care in this country.
In fact, public decisions invariably require tradeoffs and we elect people to use their judgment to make these decisions. We provide them with staff who do countless hours of research and analysis to inform their judgment. As everyday citizens, we see our particular slice of reality. As elected officials, they see more slices of reality. Reeves, I think, emphasized this well.
She said that five sites were evaluated with multiple criteria that included topography, geographic area, land price, how many property sellers were involved and their willingness to sell. According to Reeves, the Freemanville / Wood Road site was the best of the five and approved by a vote of 7–0 by the Board.
I’m not saying that the site is a good site, even though it might be better than the other four. Personally, I’m opposed to the site just because I think it will be detrimental to the character of Milton. Milton High School was a pretty big pill to swallow for the Crabapple area and while it is choking it down, a Freemanville High School would be an even bigger pill for the area.
However, I don’t have an alternative – or course, I don’t have access to the Board’s data analysis either ;->. Prior to last night my alternative was to reuse the old Milton High School site. However, Reeves explained that that site is only 42 acres some of which is wetlands. That site is not big enough to build the “high school of today” with all the amenities that the modern school has. The School Board has a policy that it will offer the same amenities to every student in the system and that the students who are currently going to school in the old Milton High School (Connected Academy and Independence High School) are doing so voluntarily, which apparently makes it OK to provide “sub standard” amenities.
I’m a problem solver by personality and I find it frustrating to not be able to figure out a better solution to the location of the new high school problem. Our kids must have a high school somewhere, but where? After attending the meeting last night, I do know that the School Board’s heels are dug in and they are moving ahead to start addressing some of the watershed issues with the proposed site.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 3 Comments »
Birmingham Highway - Wood Road Elementary School Informational Meeting
categories: Announcements, Milton Real Estate, Schools
This post is mostly informational only. There is a meeting on September 25th at 7PM for the community to learn more about the new school and to ask questions about the school’s features, design, bus transportation and redistricting. The meeting will be held at Summit Hill Elementary School on Providence Road.
This is not a meeting to discuss whether or not there should be a school on the site at Birmingham Highway and Wood Road just south of the entrance to White Columns. That ship has long since sailed.
Personally, I’m not opposed to a new elementary school at that location. (However, what I am opposed to is the proposed new high school and possibly middle school at the other end of Wood Road on Freemanville Road.)
We need another elementary school. It is fitting that the meeting will be help at Summit Hill because that school stands to benefit the most from the construction of a new school. Summit Hill is the most overcrowded elementary school in the Fulton County School System, with an enrollment of 1,008 students, fortunately down from the projected 1,050 students. For anyone who is opposed to a new elementary school, count the trailers there or visit during recess and see where the kids get to play.
The new school is apparently going to be modeled after Renaissance Elementary in Fairburn, which is 
pictured above. The school will sit facing northwest on the site and have an 850 student capacity and 54 classrooms. There will be a 45,000 gallon septic system with fourteen drainfield zones located on the northwest portion of the site.
All access to the school will be off of Birmingham Highway; no access will be from Wood Road.
The projected opening date for the new school is September 2009. Originally it was supposed to be 2008. That is one of the questions that I have: Why was construction delayed? The money was available through SPLOST funding. What I heard is that the City of Milton slowed the project down, but I don’t know that for fact or why they would do that, not that it can be changed now. I’m just curious to know what our elected representatives and newly formed city are doing in this regard. They say they have no control over the new high school.
In the end, though, the school is only a physical building. It is not really a school until you fill it with children and teachers and administrators. The most important thing is not selection of the brick color or the direction the school faces but who will be the principal. That, and, of course, what the mascot and school colors will be.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
The Facts about Georgia’s, Atlanta’s and North Fulton’s SAT Scores
categories: Schools
Last week the 2007 SAT scores were released by The College Board. I look at the SAT scores for the North Fulton High Schools and I say, “Great, six of the top ten high schools, as measured by SAT score, are in North Fulton.”
Then I say, “Gee, that seems good, but Georgia is only ranked 46th in the nation. Who cares if you are the best, if what you’re being measured against isn’t very good to begin with?”
The release of SAT scores last week in Georgia quickly disintegrated into ad hominem, circumstantial and anecdotal arguments about why Georgia ranks so low (46th) in national SAT rankings.
Some observers are distressed that the media focuses on the negative – that Georgia is 46th in the nation – while other observers can’t help but dwell on the negative and profess their shame at living in Georgia (or certain counties in Georgia). I can help those people sell their homes if they want to leave ;->.
One thing is true about the SAT scores…every one has an axe to grind and the scores provide the perfect whet stone.
First a sample of the rhetoric for you ambulance chasers before we get to my conclusion.
- Georgia’s low scores are the result of “the illegal population”.
- Private schools have drained all the “talent” from the public schools resulting in lower public school scores.
- Public school administrators are overpaid with no accountability while the teachers are underpaid. Include in that that the Governor just throws lottery money at the problem and doesn’t have a clue. No leadership is the consensus; cleaning Perot-esque house is the proposed remedy.
- It is the fault of the education bureaucracy, including the teacher unions.
- The test was harder this year – and longer – and the students simply got tired.
- The parents are ultimately to blame for not devoting the time and attention to helping their children and instead chasing materialistic ends. Parental greed is leaving the children’s educational - and homelife – needs unattended.
- Blacks scores lower on the SAT and Georgia has a higher proportion of blacks. Same argument with Hispanics.
- We don’t hold teachers accountable and parents don’t care.
- All Georgia students must take the SAT compared to other states where participation is not as broad.
- The federal No Child Left Behind program has drained resources from the top students to feed “the bottom dwellers.”
- Southerners are just stupid: the worst school in New York is better than the best school in Georgia.
- The reality isn’t so bad. The biggest problem public education faces is negative attitudes and perceptions, mainly fostered by local media.
- The culprit for low SAT scores in Georgia is that we need more school days and longer hours – look at what other countries do compared to us.
- Poverty is the biggest indicator: the schools with the higher percentages of free school lunches score lower.
These comments on the SAT demonstrate why it is so hard to solve social problems in a democracy! Everyone has an opinion that is rooted in some personal experience or ideology and with the exception of the outright race baiting, many of the opinions have some basis in truth. Surely there are some overpaid, empty suit, bureaucrats in the system. Clearly the more involved the parents are in their children’s education the better the outcome. Clearly socio-economic status of the student population has something to do with educational attainment.
The one irrefutable fact, though, is that everyone will spin the SAT test results to their political advantage. The governor took Georgia’s five point fall as a positive because relative to the national average, Georgia actually improved, although remaining in 46th place. State Superintendent Cox highlighted that Georgia held its own and that minority students faired better in Georgia than the national averages. Fulton County Schools focused on having six high schools in the Georgia top ten, a nine point increase over last year and seventy-eight point lead on the national average.
Other observers can’t help but fixate on the 46th place state ranking, which brings me back to the original question: If Georgia is ranked 46th in the nation in SAT scores, does it matter that North Fulton has the best schools in the state? I mean, who cares if you are the best in a poorly achieving state? What about the person who claimed that the best school in Georgia is worse than the worst in New York?
Why is Georgia ranked 46th nationaly in SAT performance?
The reality of the matter is that comparing SAT scores across states is a joke. Even The School Board, who administers the test, says that using the SAT to compare and rank states is invalid.
The biggest reason that it is invalid to compare SAT scores is that states have a huge difference in the so-call participation rate, that is, the percentage of seniors (they don’t even have to be college bound) who take the test. Some states mandate the test; others make it optional; and still others depend more on the ACT than the SAT because that is the test of choice by the major in-state schools.
In some states, a small percentage of college-bound seniors take the SAT because they are trying to qualify for a specific scholarship or apply to a selective out-of-state university. These students score higher than the average student. The greater the participation rate the lower the state average score. I did a simple correlation test on the two variables across all states and they have a correlation coefficient of .88, which in social science is extremely reliable.
Georgia’s participation rate is 69%, 13th highest in the country. The average is 48%.
Iowa has the highest SAT scores, but its participation rate is only 4%. Seventeen of the top twenty states in SAT score had participation rates below 10%.
If you compare Georgia’s 1472 score to other middle participation states like Pennsylvania (1474), Delaware (1479), North Carolina (1486), Florida (1472) and Indiana (1487) our scores aren’t so far out of norm. [Note: Virginia and Vermont are both middle participation states and both have averages over 1500 at 1520 and 1542 respectively.]
So if I were the Governor, the Leader of the House, the State Superintendent of Education or the Editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, I’d give the SAT a rest already. It is an irrelevant statistic when used to compare states and dwelling on it, spinning it or reporting on it doesn’t help anyone and only perpetuates a belief that Georgia is a state of low achievement.
The Best High Schools in Georgia.
What analyzing the SAT scores can tell you is the relative strength of the high schools within Georgia. Like last year’s data and the year before that, clearly the Georgia-400 corridor, North Fulton and East Cobb have the strongest collection of high schools. Ten of the top thirteen schools in the state are in North Fulton or East Cobb. This is the single, number one reason, that people want to live in North Fulton. Whether it is someone relocating to Alpharetta from Texas or from Norcross, they want to be here first and foremost for the schools.
| Top Ranked Georgia High Schools | |
| Davidson Magnet (Richmond) | 1710 |
| Northview (Fulton) | 1702 |
| Walton (Cobb) | 1697 |
| Chamblee (DeKalb) | 1690 |
| Roswell (Fulton) | 1689 |
| Columbus (Muscogee) | 1659 |
| Chattahoochee (Fulton) | 1654 |
| North Springs (Fulton) | 1649 |
| Alpharetta (Fulton) | 1647 |
| Milton (Fulton) | 1641 |
If you were to attempt to determine why the schools in North Fulton do better than the rest, you have to look no further than socioeconomic measures: percentage of free school lunches; median home value; median income. It is no surprise that the swath of real estate five miles east and west of GA-400 running north from I-285 to the Forsyth/Dawson county line represents half of the property tax paid IN THE ENTIRE STATE. That is where the best schools are – or at least where the best test takers are.
Now, for that lady who claimed that the best school in Georgia was worse than the worst in New York, I did a little research on the web, but couldn’t find the 2007 SAT scores for New York broken down by school like I can for Georgia. However, if anyone has that data, I’m happy to do the comparison. If true, I’ll root for the Yankees to win the World Series.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
Proposed High School in Milton Gets an F in My Book
categories: Alpharetta Real Estate, Milton Real Estate, Schools
This is one of the more difficult posts to write of all that I’ve written on this blog. Perhaps that is because I see both sides of the debate and believe each has some merit. However, even though I wrestle with finding the “right” answer to our school over-crowding situation in North Fulton, in the end I believe that the proposed new High School on Freemanville Road is definitely the wrong answer. And, it is not even so much that it is the wrong answer as it is that there just seems to be a much better alternative.
Can someone please tell me why we don’t redevelop the original (old) Milton High School site in downtown Alpharetta instead of breaking ground on a completely new site in a part of the county that doesn’t have the infrastructure to support it?
It is not that I don’t understand the need for the Board of Education to make its site selections in secrecy or not to be subject to local zoning. In this day in age when everyone wants “it” but no one wants “it” in their backyard, sometimes the only way to get things done is to force the issue with government control, as disappointing as that is to our democratic foundations. Plus, there are issues around land speculation and controlling the cost of the property to be acquired that I’m sure have contributed to the system that we have today.
However, saying that I understand why we give the Board of Education the authority we do doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that a better solution could have been found than building a new high school on the west side of Freemanville Road just before the gated entrance to White Columns. I only wonder now if we stand a chance of reversing the decision and adopting what I think is the better option of redeveloping the original site of Milton High School.
It is also sadly ironic that the desire for local control over land use, which was the major driving force in forming the new City of Milton, has been overrun so blatantly by Fulton County and now the Board of Education. I’ve written before how Fulton County gave Milton the figurative finger in the final days of its authority and passed resolutions that, in my humble opinion, will adversely affect Crabapple for years to come. Now enters the Board of Education with a decision to place a high school right in the middle of Milton. This decision by a Board that has one elected representative from this area also seems destined to have long term repercussions on Milton.
If I were given an opportunity to respond to the Board’s decision, this is what I’d say: Placing a new high school on Freemanville Road impacts The City of Milton in ways that it doesn’t have to.
Traffic
Traffic is the number one issue in all of North Fulton and while I agree that the placement of a school doesn’t necessarily create new traffic, it just sends it to different destinations, I don’t totally agree. Teachers and staff will have to get to the new school which means more traffic that doesn’t exist today trying to get through two lane intersections through out Milton. When school is in, the wait in the morning at the stop sign at Freemanville Road and Providence Road is already about 30-40 cars in each direction.
Community Disturbance
While I’m sure the design of a new high school would be well thought out (the new Milton HS looks great), and while I’m not totally convinced that a new school would have that much adverse affect on the surrounding property values (Six Hills and Kensington Farms still are doing well), we just don’t need a big new high school - plus potentially a middle school - right in the middle of Milton. Milton has an undeniable rural character coupled with low density. That is the differentiator between Milton and other local communities. Putting a large high school right in the middle of the “city” would affect the rural character. Why would we want to devalue our biggest asset, particularly when there are other options? If the site on Freemanville were the last site available, I’d say build the school there, but it is not the last site or the only viable site.
I’m not naive enough to believe that a parcel of land over 100 acres will go undeveloped for long in Milton, but what we need at that site is not a school - or another subdivision for that matter. If I were playing my own version of SimCity with Milton, I’d put a small government center there possibly with a library. Milton has no “center” now. For that matter we don’t really have any assets as a city, no real parks, trails, recreation centers, senior centers, meeting space. Heck, the City Council and administration is at an office park off Windward Parkway.
Where is the vision of what Milton will look like ten years from now? If we think it won’t continue to get developed we are kidding ourselves. If our local government doesn’t put some of the remaining land into the public trust, it will all be developed.
Septic
When the Kings Ridge school was proposed on this site, it was estimated that for 700 students a 30,000 gallon per day septic system would be needed. If you have a 2000 student high school and you add in some staff, simply math tells you that you’ll need a septic system to support around 100,000 gallons per day. (For reference, a rule of thumb in sizing residential septic systems is that each occupant produces 60 gallons per day of waste, which includes cooking, bathing and washing.)
I’m sure that the School Board has considered the ramifications of having a septic system that large. OK, maybe I’m not completely sure. Summit Hill Elementary is the only current Fulton County school on septic and everything I’ve ever heard is that it is a headache. In fact, there are two septic systems at Summit Hill: one main and one backup. That is why the school sits so far off the road; the large front field is where the drain field is located.
Again, I ask: Why would you go to all the trouble of building a school with such a huge septic system when you have a site in Alpharetta that is already on public sewer?
Development Cost
I have no idea how much is budgeted for construction of the new high school. It cost $65.6M including the land to build the new Milton High School in Crabapple. The School Board apparently has $25M set aside for land purchases for a new high school and middle school. Why spend so much money acquiring new land when you already have a parcel in downtown Alpharetta? Not to mention that my amateur logic suggests that it would be less expensive to raze that site and build a new school than to do all the dirt work, septic work, road and turning lane work and utility work that would be required at a greenfield site.
I’m not sure how the Board of Education reached its decision on the location of a new high school. Even if they are allowed to work autonomously, it would be nice for them to share their thought process after the fact, if just to help us understand. There could be some over-riding rationale that we know nothing about.
Can We Unstick Ourselves?
For now, we are stuck with the Board’s decision. The main obstacle standing in the way of development is getting permitted for the septic system by the State Department of Natural Resources. Local government has absolutely no control over the outcome. It is time for State elected officials to step up and lead us to a better solution than what is currently proposed. Clearly we have to do something because Milton High School is projected to have 3000 students by 2011, about 1000 more than it was designed for.
The Milton/Alpharetta representative on the School Board is Katie Reeves. She is quoted in the Milton Herald as saying: “Regardless of where the high school is, there is going to be a hue and cry against it. We just have to make the best choices we can.”
It would be easy to dismiss the opposition to the proposed site as just some “hue and cry”, just another case of crying over spilt milk or over reaction by sensitive residents. Clearly a lot of the reaction is understandably emotional by nearby property owners.
However, just like every good joke has a kernel of truth in it, every good hue and cry has a kernel of truth in it, too. I’d like to know how this is the best choice we can make.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 6 Comments »
Science Results for CRCT Need to be Examined Under Microscope
categories: Schools
I’ve gone back and added the Science and Social Studies CRCT results to the elementary school scores in Fulton County Schools. Prior to this year, I have not reviewed that data.
School system-wide, about 10% of students are not meeting the CRCT standard in Reading, Math and Language Arts. That is probably about right: If every student were meeting the standard, then I’d argue that the standard is not high enough.
(Side note: In fact, while we tend to brag that our students in North Fulton are doing very well, when I speak with parents who move here from other states, too often they comment that the level of learning is noticeably lower here that elsewhere. That is material for a future post here: when scored against other schools in Fulton County or in Georgia, North Fulton does great. How does it compare to other states?)
In Science, a full TWENTY-FIVE percent of students are not meeting the grade - and it is the
same in third through fifth grades. Social Studies is on par with reading, math and language arts at ten percent. Science is not. Why are so many more students not doing well in Science?
I’m not pretending to know the answer. I just know what I see in the data: We are performing significantly worse in Science. This is also probably a national phenomenon, too. As a nation, we aren’t very good at science we are routinely told. This has implications on our lives from the workplace to the garden to the kitchen…science is everywhere.
I performed my own somewhat scientific test today after considering these science scores. I downloaded some CRCT practice tests and gave them to my fourth grader and third grader. I wanted to see what they knew, but more importantly I wanted to see what was being asked on the tests.
Science is divided into physical, life and earth science. The scary thing about the test is how simple the questions are. Try the tests yourself if you want or test your kids. (Download Life Sciences| Earth Sciences | Physical Sciences)
Q: Which part of an animal might form a fossil?
A: Brain B: Bones C: Eyes D: Heart
Q: If you put a metal spoon in hot water, the spoon will
A: Melt B: Dissolve C: Get Cold D: Get Hot
These are just representative questions; some are a tad harder; few could be any easier. We have schools where two-thirds of students don’t meet the basic standard. The best schools are still doing relatively well - and relative is the operative term. The schools that do well in reading and math still do well in science, just not as well: Shakerag, Mountain Park, Cogburn Woods, New Prospect, Summit Hill.
Starting in Middle School, there is an alternative for families who want to emphasize math science in the curriculum. The Fulton Science Academy is a charter school within Fulton County Schools where the Foundational Approaches to Sciences teaching model is used. The school, located in Alpharetta on Hembree Road, is open to anyone living in Fulton County and enrollment to about 400 students is granted based on application and lottery. There are 130 sixth graders on the waiting list who would like to attend.
Fulton Science Academy’s has the best CRCT test scores in the sixth grade for both the fewest students not meeting the standard (8.5%) and the most students exceeding the standard (47.9%)
Again, I don’t know the answer to the problem and it is not my nature to point out a problem and not be able to offer suggestions and alternatives. Perhaps the best I can do at this point is suggest we get the kids out from in front of the computers and into the back yards, forests and parks. Fortunately our area of Alpharetta and Milton, in particular, offer lifestyles where families can have big yards with woods, streams and even lakes for the kids to explore and wallow in. The best earth science lessons are the muddiest ones.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
North Fulton Schools Continue to Lead in CRCT Scores
categories: Schools
The CRCT Test, officially the Criterion-Reference Competency Test, is a state-wide test taken every Spring to measure how well students are learning the state curriculum. Sounds dull: Standardized tests. Let’s see if we can make this more interesting.
The results for 2007 have been released by the Georgia Department of Education and their analysis is that 2007’s results are better than 2006’s. The test is designed to measure how well students are learning the Georgia Performance Standards. Apparently, they are getting better. Of the nineteen tests administered, scores were up on sixteen. That is definitely progress.
I have taken the scores from all the elementary schools in Fulton County and created a tool for you to search and compare across schools. When people are evaluating North Fulton as a place to live, they definitely want to know which are the better schools.
I will offer the following caveat, though. These are standardized test results. They are only one measure of a school’s ability and you can argue all day about whether the test is fair and viable. For better or worse, though, these are the numbers that we have to compare schools. Remember that your child could go to the “best” school by the numbers and get a teacher who didn’t work out so well with your child.
To the numbers, please. These were the top points that I found when combing the elementary school data. (The percentages mentioned are the percentage of students NOT meeting the standard.)
1. Shakerag leads as the #1 performance school in the district for the second year in a row. Across all subjects and grades, on average only 1.3% of students did NOT meet the basic standard.
2. Shakerag was the best performing school across all grades in Math (0.99%).
3. Summit Hill was best performing across all grades in Reading (0.69%).
4. Crabapple Crossing was best performing across all graded in Language Arts (1.14%).
All these percentages are very small, to the point where it is just a few kids missing a few questions. The tenth best school over all is State Bridge Crossing and it has a score of 3.99%, which is still very low (good). Remember, this is like golf ;-> The lower the score the better.
The Rule of Thirds
There is a pretty wide disparity in the Fulton County School System between the achievers and the non-achievers. While Shakerag’s student were ripping through their tests, students at College Park Elementary might as well have been flipping coins.
One-third of the schools, eighteen to be exact, achieved at scores below 5%. All eighteen were in North Fulton, on both sides of GA-400.
There is a middle third that performs at between 5% and 20% and a final third where one in five students or worse are not meeting the state mandated standards.
The Perfect Scores
Just as an observation in the data, I did notice that there were some schools at some grades and subjects where everyone met the minimum standard. Now that is truly No Child Left Behind.
In the first grade, Wilson Creek, Shakerag, Crabapple Crossing and New Prospect had perfect scores in reading. Wilson Creek and Shakerag also had perfect scores in math.
In the second grade, Shakerag was perfect in ALL SUBJECTS (math, reading and language arts). That is a great accomplishment. Summit Hill was perfect in reading and Crabapple Crossing perfect in language arts.
In the third grade, Mountain Park Elementary showed it’s mastery of the subject matter, bringing the title back to the west side of GA-400. Mountain Park was one of the “original best schools” some years ago before many of the newer schools were built. It is still one of the better schools around and the third graders proved it by acing math, reading and language arts.
I’ll leave you to your leisure to check out fourth and fifth grades. Go here to see the data.
One of my favorite books when in school was How to Lie with Statistics. Check me out…how did I do? No matter how you spin it, though, North Fulton’s elementary schools are leading the pack. Stay tuned for analysis if the middle schools and North Fulton compared to the surrounding schools districts for Forsyth, Cobb and Gwinnett Counties.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
Tear Down Old Milton High School Before Building Freemanville High School
categories: Schools
As most folks are now aware, the Fulton County Board of Education announced this Spring the purchase of 117 acres of land on Freemanville Road near Wood Road, just south of the entrance to the gated section of White Columns. The intention is to build an additional high school as well as a middle school on the site.
The first reaction of the local residents is always to petition, so, here is the obligatory petition: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/new-school-site-opposition.html So far, there are 190 signatures. That’s not an overwhelm ground swell of opposition, in my opinion. Petitions don’t matter though, anyway. I wonder if blogs do?
Naturally people living in the area are upset – this site was the very site they all fought so hard to keep Kings Ridge Christian School from building on a few years. Ultimately the residents lost their battle in court to stop the school, but the school elected to go elsewhere anyway and found more accommodating neighbors at their new site on Bethany and Cogburn Roads. I suspect the residents of Freemanville Road would trade today the projected 750 student Kings Ridge, which has built a very eye-appealing building (some people say it looks like a ski lodge) for the 1800 student public high school.
None the less, what is done is done. The school board made the site selection and has purchased the property. This is always done with the utmost secrecy because of the impact (both positive and negative) that it can have on the surrounding property. And the school board can act with complete autonomy and impunity; no local government has to approve any zoning. Fait accompli.
I understand the rationale of why the school board makes site selections like it does. If they couldn’t be shielded from the barrage of comment and protest that they would get from every site selection process, new schools would never be built…and new schools we need without question.
When the new Milton High School opened in 2005, it did not add any capacity to the system; it simply replaced an aging, falling down, old school with a new one. By 2012, it is projected that without a new school there will be 3000 students attending Milton High School, which was built for 1850. Now that would really create traffic congestion in Crabapple, as if that would be our biggest problem. I don’t know any potential home buyers in this area who would like to move to this area to attend the touted Milton High School, only to have there child sit in a trailer in the parking lot for two of their four years. That defeats the purpose of having a state of the art school in the first place.
So, on the one had we desperately need more schools, not just high schools. But on the other hand, no one wants the school “in their backyard.” I like to eat chocolate cake and not get fat, too.
This is exactly the sort of thing people said when the new Milton was built: It was going to ruin the neighborhoods of Kensington Farms and Six Hills and create gridlock in Crabapple. Looking at the situation we have now, I’m unsympathetic to the hyperbole of the “damage” done by the blaring bands, loudspeakers and the overhead lighting at the stadium. The new school was very well done and the impact on the neighborhoods has been minimal in my observation. Traffic is not great; but people do get to where they are going and many people, me included, have changed their driving patterns to avoid Crabapple at times I know it is congested…but Crabapple traffic is a whole other blog post ;->
The Alternative
That said, and given the huge need for a new school, I’m not convinced that the new site location on Freemanville is the best alternative primarily because the school will have to be built on a septic system. Summit Hill Elementary School is the only school in the Fulton County system built with septic and it just creates more headache and requires more land for the drain fields. Summit Hill apparently even has two septic systems, one being a backup. Summit Hill is also only a 1000 student school, about half what would be at a high school.
For my money, the best alternative would be to tear down the old Milton High School in downtown Alpharetta and build a new school on that site. The school board already owns the land and the resident population is used to having a school at that location. The site is centrally located and close to major roadways.
Opponents to this strategy argue that the old school is now being use for Independence High School and Connected Academy, together which house about 200–400 students currently. Independence used to be in Roswell and Connected Academy is brand new. It is ironic to me that the old Milton High School was in too bad of shape for students to continue going there, but good enough to house two alternative schools now that the new school is built.
If I were God … let me rephrase that, if I were on the site selection committee – or even on the budget committee for the school system, I would rather tear down and rebuild on the old site than go into rural Milton and build a septic based school in enemy territory. If I were spending my own money, that is what I’d do. Then I’d find another location for Independence High School and Connected Academy even if it meant renting space in a shopping mall like Kings Ridge did for so many years.
That solves the High School location problem, but it doesn’t solve the middle school problem. Yes, we need another one of those, too. The idea has been to co-locate the schools like they did in Crabapple. If in the end only a middle school is built on Freemanville Road I could live with that. Don’t forget: Our kids do need a place to attend class. Today, as a matter of fact, I witnessed the delivery of two additional trailers to Northwestern Middle School. Crews were busy setting the foundations and leveling the trailers.
Currently the school system owns land for a new elementary school slated to open in 2009 on Birmingham Road and Wood Road. If the new elementary were co-located with a new middle school on Freemanville Road, and the new high school were built on the old site in downtown Alpharetta, I would be in favor of that. Furthermore, the City of Milton could use a library in my opinion. What about a partnership between the city and the schools to co-locate a library/media center with the middle and elementary schools? The great thing about that site is that it is centrally located to everyone living in Milton.
But what do I know? I’m just a real estate consultant with a blog…oh, and a tax payer with three children who I would prefer not attend classes in trailers. My name is on that petition.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 2 Comments »
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