County Residential Center

County Residential Center in McKinney, TX, is a specialized, non-traditional high school serving grades 5-12 with just 92 students, designed for a specific student population requiring a highly structured or residential educational setting within the McKinney Independent School District (Isd).

This school is fundamentally different from the high-performing comprehensive high schools that surround it, such as McKinney Boyd High School and Rock Hill High School, which rank in the top 20-30% of the state. The most striking difference is academic performance: only 6.25% of students were proficient in Algebra I compared to the district's 67.91%, and 39.29% were proficient in English I Reading versus the district's 68.59%. However, the school shows a remarkable strength in serving special education students, ranking in the 58th percentile (3 stars) for this subgroup—its highest-performing area. The school also has an extremely low free/reduced lunch rate of 4.35%, a very low student-teacher ratio of 9.2:1, and high per-student spending of $17,441, which is nearly double that of nearby schools like McKinney North High School ($9,899).

The data strongly suggests this is a residential facility for students placed by the court system or for therapeutic reasons, not a standard neighborhood school. While the school's overall 1-star rating and 4.3% dropout rate (over 20 times the district average) are concerning, these metrics must be understood in context: the school is attempting to educate a population that has already struggled in traditional settings. Performance with "At Risk" students is volatile, ranging from the 68th percentile to the 21st percentile in consecutive years, likely due to the small student body. Despite these challenges, the school's specialized environment appears more effective for its unique population than similar institutions like Anna Academic Achievement Center, which has a 19.1% dropout rate.