Austin TX School Districts: Boundaries and How to Look Up Official Ratings

School district boundaries in Austin are set by the Texas Legislature and administered by each independent school district (ISD), not by the city of Austin. That means the city limits, county lines, and ZIP code boundaries you see on a map are separate from the district boundary lines that determine where your child goes to school. A single ZIP code like 78745 or 78750 can straddle two different ISDs, and a single street can mark the dividing line between them.

Why ZIP Codes and District Lines Are Not the Same Thing

ZIP codes were created by the U.S. Postal Service for mail delivery routing, and they have no legal relationship to school district governance. Buyers who assume that a ZIP code equals a school district frequently discover after closing that the home they purchased is zoned to a different campus than the one they expected. This is particularly common in fast-growing corridors like the 78613 ZIP code area around Cedar Park, where Leander ISD and Round Rock ISD boundaries run close together.

The only reliable way to confirm a school assignment is to run the specific property address through the district's official address lookup tool or call the district's enrollment office directly. Real estate listings sometimes display school information pulled from third-party databases that can be out of date, especially after a district redraws attendance zones, which happens periodically as enrollment shifts.

What Happens at Boundary Edges

At the edges of any district, two houses on opposite sides of the same street can be assigned to entirely different school systems. This is common along major corridors like Parmer Lane, FM 1826, and the area around Slaughter Lane in South Austin where Austin ISD and Hays CISD meet. If the school assignment matters to your household, verifying the boundary before you write an offer is not optional. It is a step that belongs in your initial research, before you fall in love with a floor plan.

2. Which Independent School Districts Serve the Austin Area

The Austin metro is served by more than a dozen ISDs. The districts below cover the vast majority of homes that buyers search for in and around the city. Each one has its own elected school board, tax rate, enrollment process, and campuses. Understanding which district covers which geography is the first step in any school-focused home search.

Austin ISD

Austin ISD is the largest district in the metro, covering most of the city of Austin proper. Its boundaries stretch from the neighborhoods around The University of Texas campus southward through South Congress, Travis Heights, Barton Hills, and Zilker, and extend east through East Austin into the areas around Airport Boulevard and beyond. The district operates over 130 campuses serving roughly 72,000 students. Homes inside Austin ISD boundaries span an enormous price range, from condos near Downtown Austin priced in the mid $300,000s to single-family homes in Tarrytown and Rosedale that regularly trade above $1.5 million.

Round Rock ISD

Round Rock ISD serves a large swath of northern Travis County and most of Williamson County communities including Round Rock, Pflugerville (partially), and parts of the Domain area corridor. The district covers communities like Avery Ranch, Forest Creek, and Brushy Creek. Median home prices inside Round Rock ISD territory in September 2026 sit in the $380,000 to $520,000 range depending on the subdivision, with newer construction in master-planned communities at the higher end. If you are researching the northern Austin suburbs, this district will come up frequently.

Eanes ISD

Eanes ISD is a smaller, geographically compact district covering the Westlake Hills and Rollingwood areas west of downtown Austin. The district serves communities like West Lake Hills, Rollingwood, and portions of the Barton Creek area. Because the district covers a relatively small geographic footprint, the housing inventory inside its boundaries is limited. Homes in this district frequently carry price tags above $1 million, with many properties in the $1.5 million to $3 million range given the hill country terrain, larger lot sizes, and proximity to downtown via MoPac Expressway.

Lake Travis ISD

Lake Travis ISD covers the communities around Lake Travis, including Lakeway, Bee Cave, Spicewood, and the Rough Hollow and Vineyard Bay areas. This district sits in western Travis County and has seen significant residential growth as master-planned communities expanded along FM 620 and RM 620. Home prices in Lake Travis ISD territory range broadly, from townhomes in Bee Cave in the low $400,000s to lakefront properties on Lake Travis that exceed $5 million.

Leander ISD

Leander ISD is one of the fastest-growing districts in Texas, covering Cedar Park, Leander, Liberty Hill, and parts of northwest Austin including the Avery Ranch and Crystal Falls communities. The district added thousands of new students over the past decade as suburban development pushed northwest along US 183 and SH 29. Median home prices in Leander ISD range from approximately $350,000 for older stock in established Cedar Park subdivisions to over $700,000 in newer hill country communities near Liberty Hill.

Pflugerville ISD, Del Valle ISD, Manor ISD, and Hays CISD

Pflugerville ISD covers the city of Pflugerville and portions of northeast Austin, including communities along SH 130 and FM 685. Del Valle ISD serves the southeastern Travis County area including the communities near Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and along US 183 South. Manor ISD covers the Manor area northeast of Austin, where new construction has brought a wave of buyers seeking lower price points, with median home prices frequently in the $300,000 to $390,000 range as of September 2026. Hays CISD covers the southern portions of the metro including Kyle, Buda, and parts of southwest Austin near Slaughter Lane and Manchaca Road, an area that has grown rapidly as buyers priced out of central Austin moved south along I-35.

3. How to Look Up Official School District Ratings in Texas

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) is the only official source for school and district accountability ratings in Texas. Third-party websites aggregate and republish data in various formats, but the underlying numbers all originate with TEA. Going directly to TEA gives you the most accurate and up-to-date picture, and it lets you see the full context behind any rating rather than a single number pulled out of that context.

Texas Education Agency Accountability Ratings

TEA publishes annual accountability ratings for every public school district and campus in Texas at tea.texas.gov. The ratings use a letter grade system (A through F) based on three domains: Student Achievement, School Progress, and Closing the Gaps. Each domain is weighted and scored separately, and the overall rating is a composite. You can search by district name, campus name, or county to pull up the current ratings and the underlying domain scores.

TEA School Report Cards

Beyond the letter grade, TEA publishes detailed School Report Cards for every campus and district. These report cards include data on attendance rates, graduation rates, college readiness indicators, student demographics, and staff information. They are publicly available at the TEA website under the Texas Academic Performance Report (TAPR) section. For any campus you are researching, the TAPR gives you far more information than a single letter grade.

What the Ratings Measure and What They Leave Out

TEA ratings are built primarily on standardized test performance, graduation rates, and progress metrics. They do not capture extracurricular programs, class sizes, teacher tenure, arts and music offerings, or the culture of individual campuses. Two campuses with the same letter grade can have very different day-to-day environments. TEA data is a starting point, not a complete picture. Visiting campuses, attending open houses, and talking to current families gives you information the ratings cannot.

Research from the National Association of Realtors confirms that schools are a significant factor in the homebuying decision for a large portion of buyers. You can read more about how schools factor into real estate decisions at the NAR research page. Understanding what the data does and does not tell you helps you weight it appropriately alongside the other factors that matter to your household.

4. How to Confirm the Exact District and Campus for a Specific Address

Confirming the exact district and campus assignment for a specific address requires using the right tools in the right order. This is a step that belongs in your due diligence process before you make an offer, not after. The sequence below is how to do it correctly.

Using District Boundary Lookup Tools

Most Austin-area ISDs publish an address lookup tool on their official website that lets you type in a street address and see which elementary, middle, and high school campuses that address is zoned to. Austin ISD has its school finder at austinisd.org. Round Rock ISD has a boundary lookup tool at roundrockisd.org. Leander ISD, Lake Travis ISD, Eanes ISD, and Hays CISD all maintain similar tools on their respective district websites. These are the authoritative sources; use them rather than relying on what a listing website displays.

Verifying Directly With the District

If the online tool produces a result you are uncertain about, call the district's enrollment or transportation office and give them the street address. Staff can confirm the assignment in writing if needed. This is worth doing for any address that sits close to a boundary line, has recently been annexed into a district, or is part of a new development where the boundary may not yet be reflected in the online tool. New subdivisions in fast-growing areas like Manor, Liberty Hill, and Kyle sometimes take a cycle or two before the district's mapping tool catches up.

Why This Step Matters Before You Close

Texas law does not give buyers a right to rescind a contract because of a school assignment they discover after closing. If the school assignment is a material factor in your decision, you need to verify it during the option period, which is the inspection and due diligence window built into a Texas residential purchase contract. Your agent can help you structure the timeline so that verification happens before your option period expires.

If you are also budgeting for the broader costs of homeownership in Austin, the Cost of Living in Austin, Texas breakdown covers property taxes, insurance, and other carrying costs in detail, which are relevant because different ISDs carry different tax rates that directly affect your monthly payment.

5. School Districts, Home Prices, and What Buyers Should Know

School district boundaries have a documented relationship with home prices in the Austin market. This is not unique to Austin; it is a pattern that appears in real estate markets across the country. Understanding how it works helps you make a more informed decision about where to focus your search and what you are paying for.

The Documented Relationship Between Districts and Property Values

Research published in Realtor Magazine found that homes near schools with higher ratings commanded a premium of roughly $50 more per square foot compared to similar homes in other areas. You can read the full study on home prices near schools at Realtor Magazine. In the Austin context, this dynamic shows up clearly when you compare per-square-foot prices inside Eanes ISD territory in Westlake Hills to comparable square footage inside Austin ISD a few miles away. The gap is real and measurable.

District tax rates also vary, and that affects your carrying cost directly. Eanes ISD, Lake Travis ISD, and Leander ISD each carry different maintenance and operations tax rates, which are layered on top of the Travis County or Williamson County appraisal district rate. A $600,000 home in Leander ISD and a $600,000 home in Austin ISD will carry different annual tax bills because the district component of the rate differs. The property tax breakdown for Austin homes explains how the layered tax structure works so you can model the real cost before you commit.

How to Factor Schools Into Your Home Search Without Overweighting One Variable

School district assignment is one variable in a home purchase decision that also includes price, commute, lot size, home age, and dozens of other factors. Buyers who make the district the only filter sometimes find that the inventory inside a specific district boundary is too limited or too expensive for their budget, and they end up in a bidding war for homes that need significant work. A more productive approach is to identify the districts whose boundaries overlap with your target geography, look up the official TEA data for those districts, and then let price and property condition guide the final decision.

If you are relocating from out of state and trying to get oriented before you visit Austin, the relocation guide for Austin buyers covers the geographic layout of the metro and how to prioritize your search areas before your first trip.

For buyers looking at new construction, many master-planned communities in the Austin area sit within specific district boundaries that are worth confirming early, since the district assignment can shift as a development phases in new sections. The guide to new housing developments and master-planned communities in Austin covers the major projects currently under construction and which districts serve them.