Summary:
The Southwest Independent School District (Isd) in Texas serves three high schools—Southwest High School, Southwest Legacy High School, and Cast Stem High School—spanning grades 9 through 12 in a suburban area with a below-average district ranking of 663 out of 951 in Texas.
Cast Stem High School is the standout performer, a small magnet school with 173 students that achieves results far above its peers. It boasts a perfect 100% graduation rate, a 0% dropout rate, and exceeds state averages in Biology, English I and II Reading, and U.S. History, with an 82.93% proficiency in English II Reading—nearly 23 points above the state. In contrast, Southwest Legacy High School struggles the most, with the highest dropout rate (1.1%), the lowest test scores across all subjects, and an Algebra I proficiency rate of just 18.12%. Southwest High School sits in the middle, with a 95.5% graduation rate and a U.S. History score (71.97%) that slightly beats the state average, but its overall state ranking has remained stagnant in the 36th-39th percentile for three years.
A key takeaway is the district-wide crisis in Algebra I, where all three schools score dramatically below the state average of 54.03%, with Cast Stem High School at just 11.11% proficient. Cast Stem High School benefits from a low student-teacher ratio of 10.2 and higher per-student spending ($13,798), while Southwest Legacy High School has the highest percentage of students on free/reduced lunch (89.91%) and the lowest spending per student ($10,508). This contrast highlights how resource allocation and school structure strongly influence outcomes, with Cast Stem High School showing that targeted investment can yield exceptional results even in a lower-performing district.
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