Mount Carmel Academy

The school is safe and has had excellent faculty and staff. Unfortunately, the school has appeared to bend over backwards to avoid removing chronically disruptive students, and by doing so it has presented a daunting challenge for even the most dedicated students. Positive TAKS results hide the problem, as core teachers have started full-time preparation for the end of April tests as early as February. In addition, facilities and resources are limitted.

My oldest son graduated from Mount Carmel Academy in 2010 and won a full scholarship to University of Texas at Dallas. My daughter graduated in 2011. She was accepted to many very good colleges and won a total of $342,000 in scholarships. She eventually chose Baylor and received a scholarship approximating half of her four year tuition there. On the plus side, this is a VERY small school and is essentially an extended family. As such the students have the ability to get a lot of attention from the teachers and staff. They get to know the parents as well as the kids and can be very family supportive. Also, if your student athlete is not at the very top of his athletics peer group, because of the small size of the school, they will probably still get a chance to actually play. On the downside, as a relatively new school (it is an ex-private school retooled as a charter), they don't have all the resources that larger schools might have. Also, they seem to have a handful of weak teachers but my student observed that they seem to be working on rectifying that. I don't believe they have much capacity for special needs students but I don't know for certain.
--Submitted by a parent