Summary:
The six schools in McAllen, Texas zip code 78503 serve predominantly elementary grades, with one middle school and one alternative school, and are split between the highly-rated McAllen Independent School District (Isd) and the Idea Public Schools charter network, serving a student population with very high economic need (over 87% free/reduced lunch).
Brown Middle stands out as the academic powerhouse, achieving a perfect 100% proficiency rate for 8th graders taking the Algebra I End-of-Course exam, dramatically outperforming both its district and the state. In contrast, Roosevelt Elementary is the most struggling school, with a state percentile rank that has declined to the 13th percentile and a 5th-grade Science proficiency rate of just 12.28%. Interestingly, Idea Los Encinos College Preparatory consistently overperforms its lower-ranked district, even surpassing Brown Middle in several 6th and 7th-grade subjects like Reading and Math, showing that district rank doesn't always predict individual school success.
Key metrics reveal a wide performance gap, with a 56-percentile-point difference between the top and bottom schools. Spending varies from $12,693 per student at Escandon Elementary to $10,265 at Idea Los Encinos Academy, while student-teacher ratios range from a favorable 11.4:1 at Brown Middle to a much larger 24.3:1 at Idea Los Encinos Academy. A notable finding is the success of bilingual programs at Escandon Elementary and Houston Elementary, where students taking the STAAR in Spanish often outperform both the state average for Spanish tests and their own English-language scores, indicating effective support for native language development.
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