Academics
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  Hamilton photo courtesy of Fort Worth Business Press and Glen Ellman. **NEW** Sign Up for the Summer PSAT Course Get the enrollment form here
**NEW ** Paschal High School academics makes the Front Page of the Fort Worth Business Press ...read about it. R. L. Paschal High School is a large comprehensive public high school which first opened its doors in 1885 as Fort Worth High School. Paschal is Fort Worth's only 5A high school, with around 2200 students in the 2006-2007 school year. It is a very ethnically diverse school with about 54% of the students being Hispanic, 35.4% Caucasian, 7.7% African-American, and about 2.6% Asian. This high school has a tremendous level of parental support as well as an extremely active Alumi Association, and these groups, along with a very talented faculty and staff, have helped Paschal reach new academic heights. Today, Paschal is pretty much seen as the "school of choice" by hundreds of Fort Worth families. Large numbers of parents line up at Paschal's front door each March 1, when transfer season opens. They come from private schools as well as local SIP programs, and they want to try to get their children into this excellent public high school, where they expect to avail themselves of the superior college-preparatory curriculum and to also have their children thrive in the very diverse and "real-world" atmosphere offered at this large inner-city public school. Paschal has more Merit Scholars than the local private schools, as well as many more AP courses and other types of advanced courses (such as Differential Equations). Over half of the Paschal student body is involved in Pre-AP and AP classes. We offer here some examples by which the reader may make judgments about the super academic quality of this high school. We think it is extremely important that parents who wish to evaluate schools should realize who is making the judgments being presented. Such recognitions as Merit Scholars, AP Scholars, SAT scores, etc. are based on evaluations made by national agencies that have no local connection. Our point is that Paschal students are ranked extremely well when the basis is this sort of national comparison. Some other types of things could be based on the grade-point-average, which is obviously the result of local school judgments - teachers at the local campus. We feel that the national-level judgments are far more revealing and informative. Please read on. National Merit and Minority Scholars Paschal has a total of 55 National Merit and Minority Scholar recognitions in the current senior class. This the largest such group in Fort Worth and surrounding area and the 24 National Merit Semifinalists is a new record for Tarrant County. (Semifinalist is the term for the top 1% of students in the nation based on their junior year PSAT - those who are likely to become Merit Scholars in the spring.) This represents 100% of the National Merit honorees in the Fort Worth ISD. In fact, No private school in Fort Worth comes close to this level of accomplishment. Superintendent's Scholars - and AP Scholars Paschal has 66 seniors who have qualified to be Superintendent's Scholars (out of 119 in all thirteen FWISD high schools). These scholars include all the National Merit and Minority Scholars noted above along with all the AP Scholars (several categories of these) in the senior class. AP Scholars are those who have achieved success on a required number of AP exams in earlier years. (AP exams occur in May, so the current seniors will make many more high scores, later this school year). Paschal has more AP Scholars among these recognized students than all the other FWISD high schools combined. A little mathematics will reveal that the other 12 high schools, taken together, must have 53 Superintendent's Scholars. The Superintendent's Scholars will be recognized by Dr. Melody Johnson at a ceremony in mid-November. It is also worthy of note that Paschal actually has 134 AP Scholars following the May, 2006 AP exams, including a large number of AP Scholars with Honor and AP Scholars with Distinction, some of whom are National AP Scholars. This 134 figure includes the seniors of 2006 - now in college, those of the current senior class, and even a few current juniors who have already achieved AP Scholar status. This number of AP Scholars is many times more than any local high school - public or private. Paschal High School has led the Fort Worth District, for many years, in SAT score results. We offer here the SAT scores for the senior class of 2005-06, with comparisons to National and State level scores. It is very important to know that Paschal had 288 seniors participate in the SAT - by far the largest such contingent in the city, and that approximately 48% of those test-takers were minority students. This knowledge makes these test scores even more gratifying to Paschal patrons. Critical Reading Mathematics Writing Paschal 529 539 514 National Average 503 518 497 Texas Average 491 506 487 (The FWISD average is below any of the above numbers.) We also compute the SAT scores for a top group of seniors at Paschal (92 in this case) for comparison with private school groups of about that size. Paschal's top 92 seniors of 2006 had a these scores: Critical Reading = 660 and Mathematics = 669 for an SAT total of 1329 (using the "old style" of computing the SAT total). We believe this compares very favorably with any private school group. In May, 2006 Paschal had 511 students (another new record) participate in a total of 1138 AP exams. Not only does Paschal have many more participants and more exams than other high schools, but the level of success at Paschal is also superior. Paschal students made a total of 99 scores of "5" on these exams (the highest possible score), as well as 188 scores of "4" and 248 scores of "3." The number of successful scores at Paschal was more than double the number at any other public high school in the city. In fact, Paschal had more than half the total number of scores of "5" in FWISD, excluding the Spanish Language exam which is so heavily dependant on the native-speaker status of the participants. Paschal has added still more AP courses to the curriculum (AP Human Geography and AP Computer Science) and has also increased the enrollment in some of the AP courses already in the curriculum (AP Chemistry), so we fully expect the number of participants, as well as the number of exams to increase again in May, 2007. Each year the Lockheed-Martin Aerospace Corporation and Fort Worth ISD combine to sponsor the Academic Letter Sweatshirt Ceremony in early December. The students who are recognized in this ceremony are the juniors whose cumulative GPA is 3.8000 or higher at the end of their sophomore year. This year Paschal has 187 juniors who have been selected to receive these sweatshirts - the highest number ever at this or any FWISD high school. There are usually about 450 sweatshirt winners in the thirteen local high schools, so one can see that Paschal will have well over 1/3 of the entire total. For many years the RadioShack Corporation (formerly Tandy Corporation) has recognized all the high school students who have a 4.0000 or higher GPA by naming them RadioShack Scholars (once known as Tandy Scholars). [A very few 8th grade students have also been included through a different type of selection process.] These RadioShack Scholars are recognized in a special ceremony (usually in April) which usually consists of a preliminary portion extolling the Merit Semifinalists of the current school year, followed by a speech from a nationally known individual (Bill Nye, the Science Guy in 2006) - with the intent of working to raise the level of accomplishment of FWISD students, through such recognitions. Paschal always has the largest contingent of participants at this ceremony - about 575 of them in the spring of 2006, again a new record for Paschal High. Last Updated: 04/27/08 by BGK |