Alice Carlson Applied Learning Center

This school provided an incredible experience. Alice Carlson did an excellent job of preparing me for the real world, and I really appreciate the emphasis on Applied Learning. The projects that I did were memorable and multidisciplinary, and they taught my peers and me how to apply skills learned in the classroom and in life to varied situations. I could not have asked for a better elementary education.

I went to Alice Carlson, and I have to say, this school is really the best school I've ever been to. This school has taught me so many valuable life long lessons. I will never forget this school, Alice Carlson Applied Learning Center(ACALC)

Very disappointing. The school is supposed to draw by lottery for talented and gifted students. So why is your child sitting in class with the non-gifted children of the school employees (custodians and cafeteria workers) and the children of local ISD teachers and other employees, legacies and buddies of legacies? The PTA is weak with the exception of having some imput of getting their buddies children in the school. The touted outdoor learning center has been visited by my child's class two or three times this whole year. PE is only once a week. Science is rare. The teachers seem focused on teaching to the TAKS test but not actually educating the children. Lots of subject matter is left out. The only focus is on TAKs and keeping their job. The intercultural festival was a hurried 1 week long project at the beginning of school. No emphasis on invention convention or science fair. Parents allowed and encouraged to actually do the projects themselves and put their kids names on them. The teachers are too busy socializing at recess to notice that your child is being beat up,beating someone up, left out of games, listening and learning bad language as well as sexually explicit talk and or activities. My child has been at the school for almost four years now and except for socialization, has learned zilch. I am keeping my child on her level of learning strictly by after school instruction and enrichment provided by me. The school claims it does not need clustering as it is a school for G & T and thereby the school population as a whole is clustered. This is a total fabrication and a joke. The school is living off a reputation of apparently what it used to be. The state doesn't even recognize it as exemplary. This is obviously why all of the school's energy is being expended on TAKS, at the expense of teaching anything to the few G&T students inside its walls. What parents don't realize is that their children's scores on the Stanford Binet and Naglieri suffer from this narrow approach as the school solely focuses on the narrow parameters of trying to succeed on the TAKS. If my child didn't have friends at the school I would have pulled her out long ago. If you let your child go there be prepared to become a full time/ part time teacher.....