Lowdown Skinny On Some Huntsville Schools
Wednesday, Mar. 12, 2003

Elementary:

Compared were Challenger, Mt Gap, Morris, AAA, and Sci&Flang. Challenger is tops in SAT9 reading and math followed closely by Mt Gap. Challeger's scores were 83 and 88, respectively. Worst was Morris, scoring 43 and 44, followed by AAA scoring 54 and 41. All had between 10 and 15 teachers per student with the best schools and worst schools having the most students per teacher.

66% of kids at Morris receive a free lunch from the Govt. Mt Gap and Challenger were 8% and 14%, which I consider high since Grissom (profiled later) only had 2%. Demographics are as you'd expect. The SE schools are about 90% white where the NW schools are a mix. Of note is that Challeger is 8% Aisan, as out daughter will be.

Middle Schools:

Compared are Challeger, MtGap, Westlawn, AAA, SFlang, and Chapman, just for kicks. Challenger and MtGap sitll dominate with 76/86 and 74/82 on the SAT9 reading and math. Though AAA has pulled itself up by it's proverbial bootstraps and now scores in the middle with 73/74. Westlawn, which I expected to score the worst due to it being located inside The Projects, didn't come in last. Westlawn scored 47/45, which is pathetic, granted, but Chapman burned it in with 38/34. Yikes.

66% of the Westlawn kids are getting govt funded free lunches. Coming in second place is Chapman with 60% free lunches. Challenger and MtGap are 8% and 4% respectively. Asian percentages of the SE schools are both 6%. All other demographic are split via geography as listed above in Elementaries.

High Schools:

I compared all High schools in Huntsville, and tried to include Beverly Hills High, but it wouldn't let me compare schools in differnet states (that's the 90210 school, or you can do Fairfax, which is in Melrose). Grissom was kickin' it with 73/81 which isn't surprising since this is the school that both Challenger and Mountain Gap feed into. Second is Huntsville, with both scores in the middle 70s. New Century, where the neices go, is 53/58, and is the only magnet school which would allow us, in our current home, to escape Butler. Butler scored 33/38, and was bested by those listed and also Lee, which Chapman feeds into, which scored 41/48. Johnson was pathetic, in the 20s, but the biggest shocker is The Seldon Center geting 12/27 and thus keeping the averages for the city in the crapper. Seldon has a shocking 30 kids per teacher where New Century has only 12. Grissom had 17 kids per teacher.

Grissom had the fewest kids getting a free lunch, with 2%. Followed, oddly, by Seldon with 6%. The one with the highest percent is the Community Intensive Treatment Youth, which I think is the D-home, with 84%. The demographics are as you'd expect on the SE/NW mix listed above. Grissom has 7% Asian.

Conclusion:

I guess I'd rather move than put down new flooring.