
#1 school for rigor is charter on Mexican border
At IDEA McAllen College Prep, a charter school near the Mexican border, 77 percent of students come from low-income families and nearly all are Mexican-American. IDEA McAllen ranks first in the nation on Jay Mathews’ 2022 Challenge Index, he writes in the Washington Post. The index measures the percentage of students taking rigorous courses and exams, rather than test scores. Alejandro Castillo, a student at IDEA McAllen, won first place for microbiology at a University of Te