Talk:IDEA Public Schools

May/June 2008
I do not feel that this is an unbiased article on the ideal public school. This article does not include student college graduation ratio. It doesn't list TAKS standing, or expulsion rates. Where is the accountability? This sounds like it was written by a biased party and not up to enccyclopedia standards. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.112.37.31 (talk • contribs) 03:31, May 26, 2008 (UTC)
 * RESPONSE: Nothing in the article makes claims of IDEA Public Schools being "ideal" public schools. All the information contained in this article is purely informational and can be easily verified. Accountability data for IPS schools, as other Texas schools, is available online at the Texas Education Agency web site. —Preceding unsigned comment added by ScottHollinger (talk • contribs) 01:59, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Jan 2014. The wording in the section on Student characteristics is unclear. It says "as" where it should say "as many ...as" or "less than" or "more than." In addition, the Source cited for this section is not primary, but second hand...a news article reporting on a study, and the study appears to be perceived as rather biased as well, according to the cited article. Needs clean up of language and needs a citation to the original study, at least. 70.124.67.42 (talk) 06:19, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

good article on important section
It is well sourced and covers an important topic. Rjensen (talk) 03:58, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Notability
The Wikipedia rule on notability is "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list. This article clearly meets that, as exemplified by this powerful story by Jay Mathews in the Washington Post in April 2016
 * Even more startling is the appearance of six public charter high schools in some of the poorest parts of Texas among the top 50 schools on our list, which I have produced for The Post (and previously for Newsweek) for 18 years. Those six schools, and a seventh that ranks No. 106, are all part of the Idea Public Schools charter network. Last year they had AP test participation rates twice as high as those of affluent public schools such as McLean and Whitman high schools, or private schools such as National Cathedral and Holton-Arms....Idea network students have courses on AP skills beginning in sixth grade, and in ninth grade they take their first AP course, Human Geography. They are scheduled for 11 AP courses in all, with a goal of passing the exams in at least three of them to win an AP Scholar designation from the College Board. Most suburban high schools would reject this as too demanding, but disadvantaged Texas families see a bleak future if their children cannot break out of remedial courses. Idea teachers increase homework gradually so students get used to the load. "That’s the Idea: Some schools serving low-income students believe in a challenge" Washington POST April 17 2016 Rjensen (talk) 04:59, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Contested deletion
This page is not unambiguously promotional, because it reads like the typical school article. Indeed it is full of details on its achievements based on major RS. The article is well written and deals with an important educational experiment that excites a lot of people. keep. Rjensen (talk) 06:53, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Ongoing work
Just FYI to folks still working on this article. There is no other article about a school that starts out with rankings as the first section. None. And the first sentence of the the first paragraph of the body is not supported by its source - the content is extremely broad and the source is much more narrow. This article was written to sell the school district and it needs a dramatic rewrite to even start looking like an article about any other school in Wikipedia.

You might want to look at WikiProject_Schools/Article_guidelines for some guidance about what a neutral article on a school actually looks like. Jytdog (talk) 22:42, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Unsourced 1
The following from the Teachers section is unsourced, not to mention promotional.

Most teachers in IDEA schools are part of the Teach For America program, a non-profit organization advocating for educational reform in schools. The program recruits teachers from prestigious universities around the country to teach for at least two years and decide to continue teaching or more elsewhere after their contract is over. Due to recruitment from most parts of the country, teachers in this system typically come from diverse backgrounds.

The structure of teachers at IDEA consists of one team leader per grade level. While the district is independently managed, teachers follow curriculum standards as normal public schools in Texas do.

-- Jytdog (talk) 00:54, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Schools
Moving this here. This is unsourced. In addition, according to this source, they run "dozens" of schools. In my view it isn't appropriate for this article to catalog and name each one of these dozens of schools. We are WP:NOTWEBHOST and WP:NOTCATALOG.

The schools currently operating in the IDEA district are:


 * IDEA Donna - Donna (launched 2000)
 * IDEA Frontier - Brownsville (launched 2006)
 * IDEA Quest - Edinburg (launched 2006)
 * IDEA San Benito - San Benito (launched 2008)
 * IDEA Mission - Mission (launched 2008)
 * IDEA San Juan - San Juan (launched 2009)
 * IDEA Alamo - Alamo (launched 2010)
 * IDEA Pharr - Pharr (launched 2010)
 * IDEA Edinburg - Edinburg (launched 2011)
 * IDEA Weslaco - Weslaco (launched 2011)
 * IDEA McAllen - McAllen (launched 2012)
 * IDEA Brownsville - Brownsville (launched 2012)
 * IDEA Allan - Austin (launched 2012)
 * IDEA South Flores - San Antonio (launched 2013)
 * IDEA Weslaco Pike - Weslaco (launched 2014)
 * IDEA Monterrey Park - San Antonio (launched 2014)
 * IDEA Walzem - San Antonio (launched 2014)
 * IDEA North Mission - Mission (launched 2015)
 * IDEA Eastside - San Antonio (launched 2015)
 * IDEA Judson - San Antonio (launched 2015)
 * IDEA Riverview - Brownsville (launched 2015)
 * IDEA Rundberg - Austin (launched 2015)
 * IDEA Mays - San Antonio (launched 2015)
 * IDEA Bluff Springs - Austin (launched 2015)

-- Jytdog (talk) 01:01, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Mostly unsourced promotional laundrylist
moving this here from College Signing Day. This is mostly unsourced, and the sea of wikilinks is unreadable; this serves one purpose and that is bragging - there is no meaningful content here. Some kind of useful encyclopedic content could maybe be generated about % of students that get into college, complete college, and the kinds of colleges people get into with some sense of percentage. But this laundrylist is just name dropping.

Students from the IDEA district have announced college acceptances to Ivy Leagues and tier one and two universities including: Brown University, Columbia University, Duke University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Notre Dame, Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, Yale University as well as competitive universities such as Colgate University, University of Southern California, Rice University, University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, Wellesley College, Fordham University, Lafayette College, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Michigan, New York University, Tufts University, University of San Diego, Johns Hopkins University, Northwestern University, Brigham Young University, Bates College and Boston College among others.

-- Jytdog (talk) 01:24, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

teacher salaries
Not sure how reliable the source is here:

The average teacher salary in IDEA Public Schools is $30,008.

There is no date on that webpage or info about where they got the data. Most troubling is if you compare that page to this capture by InternetArchive from 2012, the numbers are exactly the same for # of staff, # of students, and salaries. That is the earliest capture they have. Here is the capture from March 5, 2016, just to have that. This shouldn't go in the article without being able to pin it to a date. Jytdog (talk) 03:35, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

History
History between 2000 and 2010 is sketchy. I ran out of gas but that could be expanded. How were they funded and what was the growth like? Haven't found any secondary source discussing that at much depth. Jytdog (talk) 09:26, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
 * almost completely rewrote this back in June (diff).  Has stayed stable.  article was trashy and promo; now is OK. Jytdog (talk) 09:15, 14 October 2016 (UTC)