Leander ISD vs. Round Rock ISD vs. Georgetown ISD: The 2026 Williamson County School District Showdown
A relocation guide comparing Williamson County's three biggest school districts on TEA ratings, signature programs, feeder patterns, and the real tradeoffs every relocating family makes — including the unflattering parts.
2024-25 TEA Rating
2024-25 TEA Rating
2024-25 TEA Rating
Across All Three Districts
School district is the single most consequential filter a relocating family applies when picking a Williamson County address — and it's also the variable most likely to be flattened into marketing copy that papers over the real differences. This guide is for three audiences. The first is the out-of-state family using school district as the primary criterion before they've even picked a town, the household type that types "best school district north Austin" into a search bar and accepts the first relocation brochure that loads. The second is the current Cedar Park, Leander, Round Rock, or Georgetown homeowner thinking about resale and trying to understand how district reputation moves their listing price. The third is the engaged current resident tracking feeder pattern changes, accountability rating shifts, and bond-funded campus expansions in real time.This Leander ISD vs Round Rock ISD comparison — extended to include Georgetown ISD — gives each audience the same unflinching read.
The honest leander isd vs round rock isd comparison — and the same answer for Georgetown ISD — is that the three districts are not interchangeable. Pretending they are is the most expensive mistake a relocating family makes in this corridor. The "best" Williamson County school district depends entirely on which kind of family you are. Leander ISD wins on academic rigor and college pipeline. Round Rock ISD wins on scale, program depth, and demographic breadth. Georgetown ISD wins on price-per-square-foot and small-district intimacy — but carries the lowest TEA accountability rating of the three, and that gap has held for at least two accountability cycles.
What follows is the williamson county school districts comparison a 33-year Central Texas operator would give an out-of-state family at a kitchen table. The verified data. The unflattering parts. The hidden variable nobody else writes about. And a working decision matrix at the end.
The Quick Answer for Relocating Families
Leander ISD edges Round Rock ISD by a single TEA scaled-score point in 2024-25 (B/88 vs. B/87), and both sit roughly 12 points above Georgetown ISD (C/76) — so the decision between the three districts is less about which is "best" and more about which tradeoff your family is willing to make.
For relocating buyers asking "what's the best school district north Austin can offer?" the answer breaks into three profiles, each anchored on a different priority. For academically intense, college-prep families, Leander ISD is the strongest pick — anchored by IB programming at Leander High School, CollegeConnection dual-enrollment with Austin Community College, and one of the deepest gifted-and-talented programs in the Austin metro. For families wanting program variety and demographic breadth, Round Rock ISD offers the largest enrollment of the three and the broadest magnet-and-pathway slate, including Westwood High School's longstanding magnet reputation and an Early College High School. For cost-conscious families willing to trade a letter grade for more house, Georgetown ISD delivers a meaningful housing discount, modern growth-corridor campuses, and small-district intimacy — at the cost of a C accountability rating that has now persisted for two consecutive cycles. The rest of this guide unpacks each tradeoff in detail and tells you what the brochures don't.
TEA Accountability Ratings — What the Letter Grades Actually Mean
The Texas Education Agency's A–F accountability system combines three domains — Student Achievement, School Progress, and Closing the Gaps — into a single letter grade, and the two-year pattern across LISD, RRISD, and GISD shows the rating gap is structural, not a one-year anomaly.
The TEA accountability rating is calculated annually from three weighted components. Student Achievement measures absolute STAAR performance, graduation rates, and college/career/military readiness. School Progress measures year-over-year academic growth and how the district performs relative to peers serving similar student populations. Closing the Gaps measures whether the district is narrowing performance gaps across student demographic groups. The three domain scores roll up into a single scaled score from 0 to 100, which maps to a letter grade (A = 90+, B = 80–89, C = 70–79, and so on).
The 2024-25 and 2023-24 williamson county isd ratings were both released in August 2025 after the litigation that had delayed the 2023 cycle was resolved. The two-year picture is the more honest comparison than a single-year snapshot, because it shows whether a rating is a one-off or a pattern.
| District | 2024-25 TEA Rating | 2023-24 TEA Rating | Year-Over-Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leander ISD | B (88) | B (86) | +2 points |
| Round Rock ISD | B (87) | B | Held B rating |
| Georgetown ISD | C (76) | C (73) | +3 points |
Georgetown ISD improved by three scaled points year-over-year, which is a genuine and meaningful direction — but the gap to LISD and RRISD is roughly 11 to 12 scaled points, and that gap has held for two consecutive accountability cycles. The narrative the rating data tells is not "GISD had a bad year"; it's "GISD operates in a different academic tier on TEA's metrics, and the gap is improving but not closing."
The Georgetown ISD price discount is functionally a school-rating discount. Families paying the Cedar Park or Leander premium aren't paying for the city — they're paying for Leander ISD.
Leander ISD — The Academic Rigor District
Leander ISD's 2024-25 B (88) rating reflects an academic-rigor identity built on IB programming at Leander High School, CollegeConnection dual-enrollment with Austin Community College, and one of the deepest gifted-and-talented programs in the Austin metro.
Leander ISD serves approximately 42,500 students across Cedar Park, Leander, portions of Austin, Jonestown, parts of Liberty Hill, and parts of northwest Austin. By enrollment, LISD is the smallest of the three Williamson County districts under comparison here — but the per-pupil academic intensity is the highest. The district's signature programs read like a college-prep checklist: International Baccalaureate at Leander High School, CollegeConnection partnerships with Austin Community College that let high schoolers earn college credit before graduation, and gifted-and-talented identification at scale (LISD's GT population has historically been reported at roughly one-in-five students across the district).
Where LISD dominates: the college pipeline. Among Austin-metro districts, LISD is the one most consistently cited by relocating families whose primary filter is "where will my kid get into a flagship university from." AP coursework depth, dual-enrollment volume, and the IB diploma track at Leander HS all contribute. Graduation rates run at the top of the three-district comparison.
Where LISD underperforms its reputation: enrollment growth has slowed relative to the district's planning horizon, and there is real campus-to-campus variation in program depth between Leander HS, Cedar Park HS, Rouse HS, Vista Ridge HS, and Vandegrift HS. The headline LISD brand obscures the fact that not every LISD high school offers the same program slate — verifying which campus your address feeds is more important than verifying the district itself.
For Cedar Park buyers specifically: LISD covers most of Cedar Park, but the city is split across multiple LISD high schools based on address, and parts of Cedar Park are actually inside Round Rock ISD entirely. The high school assignment question is covered in detail in The Hidden Variable section below. For relocation context on the cities LISD serves, see our Cedar Park community guide, Leander community guide, and Liberty Hill community guide.
Round Rock ISD — The Scale-and-Diversity District
Round Rock ISD's 2024-25 B (87) rating anchors the largest of the three Williamson County districts at roughly 46,000+ students, with program depth and demographic breadth that no other Austin-metro district matches — even as multiple campuses required Targeted Improvement Plans in 2025.
Round Rock ISD is the largest of the three districts by enrollment and by geographic footprint. RRISD covers all of Round Rock, parts of Austin, portions of Cedar Park (yes — Cedar Park is split between LISD and RRISD), parts of Pflugerville, and the Brushy Creek corridor. The 2024-25 STAAR composite showed 65% of RRISD students performing at or above grade level — a single-year benchmark TEA publishes through TXschools.gov for district-by-district comparison.
Where RRISD dominates: program variety. RRISD operates an Early College High School giving qualifying students a pathway to an associate degree alongside the high school diploma, plus a magnet pathway slate that includes Westwood High School's longstanding academic magnet reputation. The district's size lets it support programming most smaller districts can't — specialized career-and-technical tracks, multiple languages, broad fine arts and athletics depth, and demographic diversity that genuinely matches the Austin metro's overall population mix rather than skewing toward any single profile.
Where RRISD underperforms its size: multiple RRISD campuses were required to file Targeted Improvement Plans in 2025 — a combination of accountability-based and federal-grant-based requirements that surfaced in local reporting through Community Impact and KXAN. The B rating at the district level masks real performance variation at the individual campus level, and parents should look at the specific high school their address feeds rather than at the district average.
RRISD covers multiple cities and the high school assignment varies significantly by address. The general principle — and the practical advice for relocating buyers — is covered in The Hidden Variable section. For relocation context on the cities RRISD serves, see our Round Rock community guide and Hutto community guide (Hutto is in Hutto ISD but borders RRISD's east edge — a comparison adjacency).
Georgetown ISD — The Affordability Gamble
Georgetown ISD's 2024-25 C (76) rating sits a full letter grade below LISD and RRISD, and the price discount families capture by buying in Georgetown over Cedar Park or Leander is functionally a school-rating discount — that's the tradeoff being made, whether buyers see it that way or not.
The direct georgetown isd vs round rock isd comparison is an 11-point scaled-score gap (76 vs. 87) and a full letter grade — a gap that has persisted across both the 2024-25 and 2023-24 accountability cycles. Georgetown ISD serves approximately 14,000+ students across Georgetown, parts of Sun City, and portions of Liberty Hill. By enrollment, GISD is the smallest of the three districts by a wide margin — roughly one-third the size of LISD and just under one-third the size of RRISD. The district's signature programs include East View High School's career-and-technical pathways and dual-credit partnerships with Southwestern University, which sits directly in Georgetown and gives GISD students an unusually close-to-home college-credit option.
Where GISD dominates: cost. Median home values in Georgetown trade at a meaningful discount to comparable homes in Cedar Park or Leander. The price differential isn't an accident — it correlates directly with the rating differential, and that correlation is what makes Georgetown the "affordability gamble" district. Families willing to accept a C-rated district in exchange for more house, newer construction, and a small-district feel can capture real value here. Sun City and certain Liberty Hill-adjacent neighborhoods compress the GISD discount in a different way — buyers there are paying for lifestyle (active-adult amenities, master-planned community programming) more than school district.
Where GISD underperforms: the rating gap. GISD has held a C rating for two consecutive accountability cycles, and while the year-over-year improvement (73 → 76) is genuine, the 11-to-12-point gap to LISD/RRISD has not narrowed enough to close. This matters for two reasons relocating families should weigh: (1) resale value tracks district reputation over time, and the longer a buyer holds, the more the rating gap shows up in eventual sale price; (2) college admissions counselors at competitive universities read district context into student transcripts, and the rating gap is visible in that reading. The honest framing: GISD is a different academic tier from LISD/RRISD on TEA metrics, and pretending otherwise costs families money on both ends — the implicit "rating tuition" they don't realize they're avoiding, and the eventual resale haircut.
For relocation context on the cities GISD serves, see our Georgetown community guide.
Side-by-Side: Leander ISD vs. Round Rock ISD vs. Georgetown ISD Comparison Table
Comparing the three districts side-by-side surfaces what the marketing brochures don't: a 12-point scaled-score gap between LISD/RRISD and GISD that's persisted for at least two accountability cycles.
| Metric | Leander ISD | Round Rock ISD | Georgetown ISD |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 TEA Rating | B (88) | B (87) | C (76) |
| 2023-24 TEA Rating | B (86) | B | C (73) |
| Enrollment (2024-25) | ~42,500 | ~46,000+ | ~14,000+ |
| Graduation Rate | ~97.8% | 96.6% | ~96.7% |
| % At or Above Grade Level (STAAR Composite, 2024-25) | Not reported in this dataset — see TXschools.gov | 65% | Not reported in this dataset — see TXschools.gov |
| Signature Programs | IB at Leander HS · CollegeConnection w/ ACC · GT identification at scale | Early College HS · Westwood magnet pathways · diverse program slate | East View HS career pathways · dual-credit with Southwestern University |
| Coverage Cities | Cedar Park, Leander, parts of Austin, Jonestown, parts of Liberty Hill, parts of NW Austin | Round Rock, parts of Austin, parts of Cedar Park, parts of Pflugerville, Brushy Creek | Georgetown, parts of Sun City, parts of Liberty Hill |
Sources: TEA accountability ratings via TXschools.gov district pages (2024-25 cycle released August 2025). Graduation rates per TEA district reporting. STAAR composite per district-published 2024-25 reporting where available. Enrollment figures approximate per district demographic reports.
What the side-by-side surfaces: LISD and RRISD are functionally tied on the headline rating (one scaled-score point apart) and trade differentiation on enrollment size and program identity. GISD trails by a letter grade and by roughly 12 scaled points, and that's the consequential comparison for relocating families. The STAAR composite gap in the table — RRISD reported 65%, LISD and GISD cells deferred to TXschools.gov — reflects a real limitation of this dataset rather than a missing signal; the recommendation is to pull the current STAAR figures for LISD and GISD directly from each district's TXschools.gov page when making a final decision.
Which District Should Your Family Choose?
The honest Leander ISD vs Round Rock ISD answer is the same one that applies to Georgetown ISD: there is no universal winner. The right Williamson County district depends on whether your family prioritizes academic rigor (LISD), program variety and diversity (RRISD), or price-per-square-foot with an honest rating tradeoff (GISD) — and there is no fourth answer that beats all three.
Profile A — Academically Intense, College-Prep Family
Recommendation: Leander ISD. Specifically, target a Vandegrift HS or Cedar Park HS feeder address. The combination of IB at Leander HS, CollegeConnection dual-enrollment, and the district's gifted-and-talented depth makes LISD the strongest Williamson County answer for families whose primary filter is competitive college admissions. The Vandegrift and Cedar Park HS feeder zones consistently produce among the strongest test-score and college-placement profiles in the district. The cost: home prices in those feeders run at the top of the three-district comparison. The payoff: the academic ecosystem your child enters in 9th grade is built around college preparation as the organizing principle.
Profile B — Multi-Kid Family Wanting Program Variety and Diversity
Recommendation: Round Rock ISD. Specifically, target a Westwood HS or Round Rock HS feeder address. RRISD's size and program slate handles multi-kid households better than LISD or GISD can — three kids with different interests (one academic magnet, one CTE pathway, one fine arts) can all find a fit inside the district without changing schools. Westwood's magnet reputation and Round Rock HS's comprehensive flagship status anchor the high school options. Demographic diversity at RRISD is closer to the actual Austin metro population than at either LISD or GISD. The cost: program variety means program complexity — RRISD asks more of parents in terms of researching which pathway fits which kid, and the campus-by-campus performance variation is real. The payoff: a district that doesn't force a single educational identity on every student.
Profile C — Cost-Conscious Family Willing to Trade Rating for Square Footage
Recommendation: Georgetown ISD. The honest framing: GISD is the affordability district, and the rating gap to LISD/RRISD is real and visible. For a family whose budget makes Cedar Park or Leander mathematically painful, Georgetown delivers more house per dollar, newer growth-corridor construction in the Wolf Ranch / Sun City / north Georgetown developments, and small-district intimacy that some families actively prefer. The tradeoff is not hidden: the C rating costs the district some of the resale halo that LISD and RRISD carry, and competitive college admissions counselors read district context. The right way to take this tradeoff is consciously — eyes open, with the rating delta priced into the housing-cost-savings calculation — rather than by assuming the three districts are interchangeable when they're not.
The Bottom Line for Relocating Families
Pretending the three districts are interchangeable is the most expensive mistake a relocating family makes in this corridor — and the cost compounds with every year your child spends in the wrong-fit feeder pattern.
The thesis stated at the top of this guide holds at the bottom: Leander ISD wins on academic rigor and college pipeline, Round Rock ISD wins on scale and program depth, and Georgetown ISD wins on price-per-square-foot with the honest rating tradeoff. The 2024-25 williamson county isd ratings place LISD and RRISD essentially tied (one scaled-score point apart) and Georgetown ISD a letter grade behind, with that gap holding across two consecutive cycles.
For relocating families using this guide as their first williamson county school districts comparison, the next step is reading the dedicated community guide for whichever city moved up your list — and then running your prospective address through the district's official school finder before you make an offer. The data on this page is verified to the Texas Education Agency's most recent published accountability cycle. What you can't outsource is the address-level verification, the campus visit during a school day, and the conversation with parents already inside the feeder pattern you're moving into. Make those three steps non-negotiable and the rest of the relocation decision gets meaningfully easier.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Williamson County school district has the best TEA rating in 2025?
In any Leander ISD vs Round Rock ISD comparison, the honest answer is Leander ISD holds the highest 2024-25 TEA accountability rating among the three Williamson County districts compared here at B (88), followed closely by Round Rock ISD at B (87), and Georgetown ISD at C (76). The 2024-25 ratings were released by TEA in August 2025 following litigation that had delayed the 2023 cycle, and both years are now published on each district's TXschools.gov page. LISD and RRISD are functionally tied; GISD trails by a letter grade and roughly 12 scaled points.
Is Leander ISD really better than Round Rock ISD for high schoolers?
For academically intense, college-prep-focused households, yes — LISD's IB program at Leander HS, CollegeConnection dual-enrollment with Austin Community College, and deep gifted-and-talented programming give it the edge on competitive college-pipeline outcomes. For multi-kid families wanting demographic diversity and a wider slate of magnet, CTE, and fine arts pathways, Round Rock ISD's larger enrollment and Westwood HS / Early College HS programs make it the stronger fit. The single scaled-score point difference at the district level (88 vs. 87) is small enough that family-fit factors outweigh the rating gap between LISD and RRISD.
Why does Georgetown ISD have a lower rating than the other two?
Georgetown ISD's C (76) rating in 2024-25 reflects performance on the three TEA accountability domains — Student Achievement, School Progress, and Closing the Gaps — that places the district roughly 11 to 12 scaled points below Leander ISD and Round Rock ISD. On a direct georgetown isd vs round rock isd comparison alone, the gap is 11 scaled points (76 vs. 87) and a full letter grade. The gap is structural rather than a one-year anomaly: GISD held a C (73) in 2023-24 as well, so the rating pattern has persisted across two consecutive cycles. The year-over-year improvement (73 → 76) is real and worth noting, but the gap to LISD/RRISD has not closed. The specific domain-by-domain breakdowns are published on the Georgetown ISD page at TXschools.gov for families who want to see exactly where the gap lives.
Does my Cedar Park address automatically mean Leander ISD?
No. Cedar Park is split between Leander ISD and Round Rock ISD depending on the specific address, and within LISD itself, Cedar Park homes feed into multiple high schools — Cedar Park HS, Rouse HS, and Leander HS — based on where the address sits inside the district's attendance zones. Two homes a mile apart in Cedar Park can be in entirely different districts, or in the same district but feeding into different high schools with different program slates. Always verify district AND high school assignment using the official boundary lookup tools on the LISD and RRISD websites before making an offer.
Is the school district difference worth paying more for housing?
For most relocating families, yes — and the reason is twofold. First, the LISD or RRISD premium is functionally a college pipeline and academic rigor premium that has measurable outcomes in AP/dual-enrollment access, gifted programming depth, and TEA accountability ratings that admissions counselors read into student transcripts. Second, the rating gap translates to resale stability over time: homes in higher-rated districts tend to hold value better through housing-market corrections, because school district reputation is one of the slowest-changing buyer-decision filters in residential real estate. For exact current home-price comparisons by district, run a direct MLS pull on Redfin or Zillow — those numbers move month to month and aren't reliable enough to publish here.
What's the difference between Round Rock ISD's Westwood and Round Rock High School?
Both campuses sit inside Round Rock ISD's B (87) district rating, but they carry different identities. Westwood High School is RRISD's flagship for academically intensive magnet pathways and has a longstanding reputation among Central Texas educators as one of the strongest college-prep public high schools in the metro. Round Rock High School is the older, comprehensive flagship — broader programming, deeper athletics and fine arts tradition, larger overall enrollment, more multi-pathway program breadth. Families optimizing for magnet/IB-style academic rigor typically target Westwood feeders; families wanting the full comprehensive-high-school experience often prefer Round Rock HS. The high school assignment for your address is determined by RRISD's boundary lookup tool, not by which campus is closer or which reputation you prefer.
What if my family considers a charter or magnet program instead?
Magnet and early-college options exist inside the three Williamson County districts and are worth considering before defaulting to a traditional comprehensive high school. Within RRISD, the Early College High School pathway lets qualifying students earn an associate degree alongside the high school diploma, and Westwood HS operates as RRISD's longstanding academic magnet anchor. Within LISD, the IB Diploma Programme at Leander High School is the district's most rigorous magnet-style academic track, and CollegeConnection dual-enrollment with Austin Community College extends college-credit access across the district's high schools. GISD's East View High School career-and-technical pathways and dual-credit partnership with Southwestern University serve a similar college-readiness function on a smaller-district scale. Outside the public districts, the Austin metro has private school options that don't carry TEA accountability ratings — those require campus-by-campus due diligence and aren't directly comparable to public district data.
Cedar Park, Texas
Master-planned communities, Leander ISD's strongest feeders, and the 183A corridor north of Austin.
Read the Cedar Park guide →Leander, Texas
The CapMetro Red Line terminus, Crystal Falls / Travisso / Bryson master-plans, and LISD at its source.
Read the Leander guide →Round Rock, Texas
RRISD's largest city, Dell's hometown, and the I-35 corridor's biggest Williamson County anchor.
Read the Round Rock guide →Georgetown, Texas
The most-beautiful-town-square anchor of GISD, Wolf Ranch / Sun City growth corridors, and Williamson County's seat.
Read the Georgetown guide →Whether you're an out-of-state relocation buyer, a current Cedar Park / Round Rock / Georgetown homeowner tracking resale signals, or a Williamson County resident following accountability rating shifts, the three-district picture above is the working comparison framework. For the wider Central Texas picture, browse all 26+ Texas Home Talk community guides, or follow us on Facebook for ongoing district and community coverage.
Current Williamson County parent?
Share what's working — or what isn't — at your child's specific campus. Real ground-truth from inside the feeder pattern is the data we update community guides with. Submit your story and tell us what an out-of-state family really needs to know.