Links about Schools in Austin TX

Here are some handy links I've found to help in your school research.

Austin School Assignment by Residential Address lets you figure out what schools a house tracks to by typing in the address of the home. Frustratingly, there's no visual map of school boundaries to look at since the borders may change each year (I'm a visual person and would LOVE to find one). When I was looking for a house, I would type in the home address at the above website, find out the neighborhood schools, then look at their rating, and finally read reviews from parents.

Here is the same address lookup for Round Rock, Eanes (Westlake), Pflugerville, Cedar Park - though this one is really hard to use. Sorry and good luck. If anyone finds a better one out there, please let me know.

Greatschools.net is a fabulous source for reviewing schools. Parents can write reviews and it gives you a better picture of a school environment, much better than "academically acceptable" will ever do. They also discuss preschools and daycares.

You can also ask specific questions on the City Data Austin forum.

Speaking of, visit Wikipedia if you are not clear on how Texas ranks its schools.

So what happens if my personality quiz (Where should you live in Austin?) places you in a neighborhood where the schools are less than stellar? Time to learn about other options. Technically AISD will let you transfer your kid - but it's a hard route to go. Here are the transfer rules. Most of the best schools in town are frozen to transfers, so good luck with this approach.

You can then look into Charter Schools. Austin has several, and I particularly like Austin Discovery School in East Austin (hello, nature walks!). These schools have a lottery enrollment, so there's no guarantee you can get your child in.

Austin also has Magnet Schools. I'm not sure on the enrollment policy on those - it's probably best to check with each school. I know that McCallum High School has an arts program that's not even listed on that page - so you might call the school district for more up-to-date information.

And last, but not least, Austin has Private Schools. Once again I'm recommending checking out greatschools.net for information.