Quest High School

Quest High School in Burnet, TX, is a small alternative high school serving just 35 students in grades 9-12 within the Burnet Consolidated Independent School District, a district that ranks in the bottom 12% of all Texas school districts. The school serves a high-needs population, with over 65% of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch, and it offers an extremely low student-to-teacher ratio of 8.4:1, compared to 14.3:1 at nearby Burnet High School and 15.6:1 at Liberty Hill High School. This small scale comes with a high cost: Quest spent $19,134 per student in 2020-2021, nearly double the $10,869 spent at Burnet High and more than double the $8,310 at Liberty Hill, reflecting a resource-intensive, individualized approach to education.

Despite this heavy investment, Quest’s academic performance on STAAR End-of-Course tests is consistently and severely below that of all nearby traditional high schools. For example, in the 2025-2026 school year, only 27.27% of Quest students were proficient in English II Reading, compared to 65.79% at Burnet High and 64.66% at Lampasas High School. In U.S. History, the gap is even wider: 26.67% at Quest versus 71.08% at Burnet High. This places Quest in the bottom 7% of all Texas high schools. The school’s most direct comparison is Falls Career High School in Marble Falls, another small alternative school with similar challenges, including very low academic proficiency and high per-student spending, suggesting these struggles are characteristic of the alternative school model in the region.

The most interesting tension in Quest’s data is between its graduation and dropout rates. In 2022-2023, Quest achieved a 96.5% graduation rate, a remarkable figure for a school with such low test scores, implying it is very effective at helping students who stay enrolled to meet graduation requirements. However, the dropout rate for the same year was 5.1%, over eight times higher than Burnet High’s 0.6% and 25 times higher than Lampasas High’s 0.0%. This "leaky bucket" problem—where the school excels with those who stay but fails to retain a critical mass of students—is the central challenge for Quest High School, making it a high-risk, high-reward option for families.