Taylor High School

Shivers ran down my arms as I read the posts, presumably submitted by teachers and staff. It was galling to see the amount of misspellings, lack of capitalization, and poor sentence structure. These are the people teaching our children. I have found the administration to be lacking in honesty and accountability. These are the same attributes that their billboards state that they are instilling in the students. As I was writing this post I received a 3rd phone call from the school today. I listened to the 3rd lie and excuse to cover up for an ongoing error on their part. Is it so hard to say "we're sorry and we will do our best to remedy our mistake?" Oh well, so much for accountability and responsibility!
--Submitted by a parent

I live in Taylor, and I love the town, but I have to disagree with some of the other posters. Taylor HS has consistently been rated "Academically Acceptable" by the TEA, which equates to the ubiquitous and generic "meets minimum standards". Roughly half of the student population does not have English as their primary language. This makes for a difficult teaching environment for teachers and students alike, despite the many outreach programs available. The socio-economic makeup of Taylor has changed over the past decade, with more single-parent, foreign, and poor households. The parents often don't have time, energy, or knowledge (a dropout cannot help their child learn pre-cal and likely cannot afford to hire a tutor to do it either) to help students with homework and many good students are left behind. Unless improvements are made, I'll gladly pay for private school for my kids when they're teenagers.
--Submitted by a parent

The high school in this district has made outstanding progress this past year. There was just a big article in the newspaper about how well students have done on the state tests, especially the minority students. I know principal and teachers seem very dedicated to making sure all students are successful.
--Submitted by a parent

I do not think that the school ignores the minority, I believe that there is an astronimical amount of non English speaking minorities that have inidated this school district and they are having to prepare the student that should prepare themselves. I found the parent involvement with these students needed the training themselves and in the past before the influx starting four years ago, there were not these problems. The students and parent supported students still succeed by taking advantage of the programs available and there is a dedicated and loyal staff that spends extended hours and volunteers to meet the needs of these minorities. The minorities must take advantage outside of school to prepare themselves to be able to be sucessful and the permenating attitude of those that fail the tests, is one of they do not care. I hope this shows you the other side, check previous year demographics.
--Submitted by a parent

School ignores minority students and creates unacceptable test ratings that bring down all averages and creates a rating of unacceptable. Test scores would improve if only they would teach all students.

5 stars this school offers lots of opportunities for students to get involved in higher level courses. And the Academic Decathlon team are award winning state champs for 2 years in a row.
--Submitted by a parent

The school is qood! Everybody is there own self! the main problem we have is qettinq our students foced on sports & extra activites! the SOCCER team & TRACK team are wonderful! One girl took them to regionals & it was her first year were very pround of her! keep up the qood work
--Submitted by a student

There are wonderful programs available to the students. The band is fantastic and they are going to state this year. The Academic Decathlon team won state 2 years in a row.
--Submitted by a parent

What can I say? It's a public high school. If you sign up for AP classes (of which there are ample offerings) and get involved in the right extracurricular activities, you'll be ok. Teachers range from marvelous to apathetic to just plain stupid, and students range from intelligent people trying to get into a great college to pregnant 14 year olds waiting until they are old enough to drop out and everywhere in between. The place can be a lot of fun, or it can be hell on earth for four years. It's up to the individual student to choose his/her courses, activities and friends wisely.
--Submitted by a former student