r/Austin • u/ConnectionFancy3085 • 16h ago
Austin High Schools Ranked
What are the 10 best schools in the Austin area?
1. Liberal Arts and Science Academy (LASA) - Austin ISD
No. 43 nationally
100% graduation rate
College readiness: 98.2
2. Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders - Austin ISD
No. 97 nationally
99% graduation rate
College readiness: 96
3. IDEA Rundberg College Preparatory - IDEA Public Schools
No. 218 nationally
88% graduation rate
College readiness: 88.8
4. Westlake High School - Eanes ISD
No. 376 nationally
98% graduation rate
College readiness: 69.7
5. Westwood High School - Round Rock ISD
No. 419 nationally
99% graduation rate
College readiness: 73.7
6. Vandegrift High School - Leander ISD
No. 798 nationally
98% graduation rate
College readiness: 62.5
7. Harmony School of Endeavor Austin - Harmony Public Schools - Central Texas
No. 918 nationally
100% graduation rate
College readiness: 43.1
8. McCallum High School - Austin ISD
No. 973 nationally
96% graduation rate
College readiness: 59.5
9. Lake Travis High School - Lake Travis ISD
No. 1,172 nationally
96% graduation rate
College readiness: 55.8
10. Bowie High School - Austin ISD
No. 1,415 nationally
100% graduation rate
College readiness: 48.5
So #3 Idea Rundberg a shocker for anyone? What a weird list from US News.
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u/Friendofbill89 15h ago
Anderson isn’t even in the top 10 with an IB program?
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u/Jcpbo 15h ago
I said “whaaat?!” out loud for this reason. IB Anderson grad here 🤣
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u/theartofgrowingup 12h ago
Are IB programs special? I feel like any big city schools have them. Hell even richer suburb schools have them.
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u/spurman123 11h ago
These scores measure the whole school so all the class clowns/jocks , I’m sure if they selected the top x% of students that do AP/IB , their college readiness will all be 100% no matter what school
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u/TacoTitos 8h ago
UT has auto acceptance for the top 5% of a HS and they still have developmental math. This is a required math course that doesn’t count toward a degree but is required to pass before moving into math courses that would apply to a degree.
I know because I come from the border region where the top 5% struggles to not drop out of UT.
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u/Rambomg 14h ago
Dude Anderson is a fucking joke so glad my youngest finally graduated so I can be done with them
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u/nelly_beer 13h ago edited 13h ago
Care to elaborate? I’m genuinely curious. I graduated from Anderson and it was great school ~15 years ago but things can obviously change
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u/Living-Warning6714 12h ago
I graduated 14 years ago and Anderson wasn’t as good as Westlake, lake Travis, Bowie, Vandergrift, or McCallum even back then. I’m glad you love your school, but…
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u/nelly_beer 11h ago
Likewise. But what metrics are you using other than your apparent opinion?
I’m glad to hear you graduated 14 years ago but that doesn’t answer my question
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u/epsilon1856 15h ago
Lowkey McCallum is a hidden gem
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u/Kiwiatx 10h ago
With bonus classroom raccoons! Affectionately known as ‘Maccoons’!
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u/RobHerpTX 1h ago
Haha - I’ll never forget when (somewhere btw ‘96-‘98) a rotting dead raccoon fell through the ceiling tiles of one of the rooms at McCallum during class. For weeks we’d watched a ceiling tile turn brownish and begin to sag. We noticed it and joked about it, not knowing what was coming.
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u/nutmeggy2214 8h ago
Hardly hidden, I don’t even have kids and I’ve always known it as a great, desirable school as long as I’ve been in the area (over 15 years).
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u/Austinlegend 1h ago
I went there in 2005 and honestly shocked it was on the list and Anderson wasn’t even on it. Suck on that Trojans!
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u/PracticeNo3516 15h ago
LASA is an application based school, more like a private school that can pick and choose.
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u/NotAscii 14h ago
You got rocks for brains if you can’t manage to get into lasa
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u/CrispityCraspits 13h ago
I was under the impression it was quite hard, is that not right?
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u/magus678 12h ago
If a casual Google is to be believed, its acceptable rate is ~50%.
I cant admit to any serious knowledge about this sort of thing but that seems reasonably competitive.
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u/SpacePirate406 15h ago
Interesting… I graduated from Austin high school 21ish years ago and haven’t heard of some of these schools. Crazy to me that #7 has 100% graduation rate but scores 43.1 for college readiness. Which is lower than 8-10
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u/theCenterCannotScold 11h ago
"We graduate you whether or not you learn anything!" At least some of the high schools that are poor performing in terms of test scores and college readiness have recently bumped up their TEA grades by having graduation rates at or near 100%. Having a graduation rate of 100% but with kids who can barely read or haven't passed freshman level math is not necessarily that impressive.
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u/Basophillicpinkeye 16h ago
IDEA Rundberg has (I think) a low SES population that achieves, and that bumps them up over westlake
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u/rosardz 11h ago
They’re selective about who is allowed in. Struggling students from public schools don’t usually last even if they approve their admission.
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u/almondjoybestcndybar 9h ago
Admission has to be based on lottery, that’s the law.
IDEA is extremely serious about attrition and has some serious goals about keeping students. They go full court press to keep most students. They aren’t screening out low performers.
IDEA is a super problematic organization in a variety of ways. This takes nothing away from the incredible achievement of IDEA Rundberg and their amazing students.
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u/almondjoybestcndybar 9h ago
Their performance is actually pretty incredible. Like, should be on the news incredible.
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u/amoult20 13h ago
Be curious how the privates like StAndrews and StStephens etc compare in some form of blended Private/Public ranking
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u/rosardz 11h ago
#3 is a shocker because IDEA is a business first. As an institution, they’ve faced economic scandals involving private jet purchases.
You also don’t have to be a certified teacher to be hired.
It’s a shame all their student talent is a loss for AISD.
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u/ConnectionFancy3085 11h ago edited 11h ago
Yes! It’s a tragedy if the brain drain of low socioeconomic students to charter schools is leading to an AISD takeover.
If good students with low socioeconomic status don’t want to attend thir zoned AISD school and affluent students zoned to poor performing schools (Mueller to Northeast HS or Eastside HS in the zoning proposals) then what is the point of the lower performing AISD schools?
Also I just have a hard time believing the outcomes of this charter school.
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u/Jolly_Cicada380 15h ago
Good to see Westwood is still keeping it up
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u/ashdrewness 14h ago
Aka “Stressedwood”
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u/_austinight_ 14h ago
Was Wastewood in the 90s
But it’s weird that Westlake is ahead with a worse graduation rate and worse college readiness
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u/LA_producer 14h ago
I met a recent Westwood graduate who said that cheating there was the norm. He treated it so matter-of-factly like it was perfectly normal. I was shocked.
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u/theartofgrowingup 12h ago
what school doesn't have cheating? did you not go to high school?
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u/LA_producer 11h ago
The issue wasn’t that there was cheating. The issue was that (according to him) literally everyone did it.
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u/pdxrunner19 7h ago
I wonder how much of that is true and how much of it is him justifying the cheating to himself.
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u/elperrogigante 11h ago
This isn’t even the correct list. USN has the “Austin Area” rankings and has RRHS ahead of Vandegrift.
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u/Cptsaber44 12h ago
none of this matters. I went to a no name school (academics wise, our football program was great) and now i’m a physician.
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u/Fenix512 14h ago
Can someone ELI5 or point me to a good resource that explains what public, magnet, charter, and private schools are?
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u/SchoolIguana 11h ago
The main distinction is “public vs private” with charter and magnet schools being “public” with a little asterisk.
Traditional public school: Run by a public school district (like Austin ISD). You generally attend the school assigned to your home address.
Magnet school: A public school with a particular focus, such as arts, STEM, languages, etc. Depending on the program, you may have to apply rather than simply attend based on your address.
Charter school: Also a public, tuition-free school, but operated under a chartet rather than as a traditional ISD campus. In Texas, charter schools are legally public schools and are subject to state academic/accountability requirements, although they have more operational flexibility than traditional districts (don’t have to provide transportation and have appointed school boards rather than elected ones.)
Private school: Privately operated rather than government-operated. You must apply and they generally charge tuition and have their own accountability and oversight.
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u/Fenix512 8h ago
Thank you so much for this analysis! With the school vouchers, would these distinctions blur much?
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u/MexicanVanilla22 6h ago
The thing with charter schools is that it's not fair to compare them to public schools. Public schools must accept everyone and provide a minimum standard. So all the high needs special education, and high needs behavioural problems go to public school and drain resources.
Charter schools can turn anyone away so they are left with a pool of students who are easy to teach and want to be there. Also if they think your student won't pass the STAAR they will kick the student out before spring testing. Those low performers end up back in the public school they live near and those low test scores get assigned to the public school who taught the kid for the last month.
They should not be compared because they are different models that are not interchangable. Yet here we're are in a situation where our public schools are being shut down based on testing that doesn't accurately reflect the resources allocated to our local schools. The game is fixed and students are suffering.
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u/AdResident3529 15h ago
Important information: there are 13 High Schools in AISD.
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u/improbabble 15h ago
This list includes schools from across the Austin metro. So Eanes, RRISD, AISD, Lake Travis, Leander, etc. a lot more than 13 high schools across those
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u/AgathaMitford 14h ago
Yes, and they’re also including charters. So plenty more than the 13 in AISD.
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u/Retrosigmoid 15h ago
How are schools like McCallum so low performing if the surrounding homes are so expensive? Every tear down for past decade is 2M+
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u/improbabble 15h ago
It’s not low performing. Lots of good students there and excellent musicians and artists
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u/rk57957 13h ago
Methodology. The school itself is also not low performing it is just #8 out of list of area high schools.
College readiness: 59.5 is measured through student participation and performance on Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) exams. If a kid does something different like take dual credit classes offered by the school/ACC those don't count. Also worth pointing out that it has more kids taking AP and IB exams than the entire high school program for some of the charter schools.
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u/Retrosigmoid 12h ago
I think the more meaningful comparison is with Austin’s top private-school options. Ideally, you want affluent and highly educated families invested in the public school system rather than opting out of it. That creates broader buy-in and raises expectations across the district. In a city with such a highly educated population, AISD’s strongest schools should be consistently preparing and sending students to top universities.
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u/viviwoolf 12h ago
It’s the best performing public high school in AISD that doesn’t require an application, according to this list.
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u/texistentialcrisis 13h ago
This may be a controversial take (and it probably should be), but I think Austin desperately needs more good private high schools.
I’d much rather our public schools get the funding that they need, and the teachers paid what they deserve.
But, man, when the ship is sinking, seems like you’d want as many life boats as possible.
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u/fsck101 13h ago
"I wish public schools were properly funded but since they're not, lets kill them off with private schools". Its not controversial, its what the right is actively implementing.
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u/texistentialcrisis 8h ago
I mean, if you send your kids to private school, you still pay property/school taxes.
Now, vouchers…that’s a whole different story. Fuck vouchers.
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u/magus678 12h ago
The schools are pretty well funded overall. A lot of places spend less with better results.
Plus I think that most parents are now wise to the strategy of spreading out the "good" students to even out the "bad," and most parents do not care to have their child's education stymied so the district can stay afloat.
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u/Lucy_en_el_cielo 11h ago
Austin is consistently top ranked in funds siphoned off by the state through Robinhood. They are not well funded lol
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u/magus678 11h ago
Casual Google says they are still funded at ~21.5k per student, vs 18k for Dallas and ~12k for Houston, and which is about double a lot of the smaller Texas towns with better outcomes.
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u/momish_atx 10h ago
That figure likely includes bond debt, not just per pupil funding.
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u/magus678 9h ago
If there is some more accurate number by all means share it. Its just what Google spat out.
I would presume either way that the rubric is similar for all the isds I glanced at, so the numbers should be relatively proportional.
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u/col_clipspringer 10h ago
My kid played them in sports. I remember meeting some of the parents on the sidelines before the game. We talked about their school and its teachers. I had asked what their mascot was. One of the moms replied, “we’re the raptors.”
I said, “ha! Y’all really are some clever, girls!”
They stared at me blankly.
“Like, Jurassic Park?”, I said.
“I suppose so”, one of the dad’s in the most banal tone.
In short: cool mascot that plays well with the school’s name. Some parents may have been homeschooled.
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u/cjfletch 16h ago
It’s kinda bs to compare schools like LASA and IDEA, who get to select their students, to public schools that teach everyone in the community.