Lively vs Murchison Middle School: TEA Scores, Feeders & Home Prices

Same District, Two Very Different Middle Schools, and the Score Gap Surprises Most Buyers

Murchison Middle School posted an 88 on its 2025 TEA accountability report. Lively Middle came in at 77. Both campuses are inside Austin ISD, both serve grades 6 through 8, and both earned every distinction they were eligible for. But the homes zoned to Lively, the lower-scoring campus, actually sell for more money. That’s the part that catches buyers off guard.

I get asked about this combo more than almost any other middle school pairing in Austin. South Austin buyers want to know if Lively is “good enough.” Northwest Austin buyers want to know if Murchison is “worth it.” And buyers relocating to town from somewhere else just want to know what the numbers actually say, without the rumor mill, without the carpool-line gossip, and without somebody trying to sell them a house at the same time.

So lets walk through what the TEA data actually shows, what the neighborhoods feel like, where these kids go to high school, and what the real estate looks like in each zone. By the end you’ll have a clear read on which campus fits your life, and which neighborhood fits your budget. (Sometimes those are the same answer, sometimes they aren’t, and that’s the part most blog posts skip.)

Lively vs Murchison: Quick Comparison

TEA School Performance Comparison (2025)

The Texas Education Agency evaluates every public school in the state each year. As of the 2023 redesign, TEA accountability is built on three domains, not four: Student Achievement, School Progress, and Closing the Gaps. School Progress has two sub-components (Academic Growth and Relative Performance), and the higher of the two counts toward the domain score. Below is how each campus performed in the 2025 cycle, with all four scores reported the way TEA reports them.

A quick note on distinctions. Per the TEA 2025 Accountability Manual (Chapter 6), middle schools are eligible for seven distinction designations: ELA/Reading, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Comparative Academic Growth, Closing the Gaps, and Postsecondary Readiness. Both Lively and Murchison earned all seven in 2025, which is genuinely impressive on both ends of the comparison. The gap in the overall score does not mean Lively is failing. It means Lively is doing harder work with a different student population and getting a different result.

The biggest spread in the data is Academic Growth. Murchison’s 84 vs Lively’s 65 is a real gap, and Academic Growth is the metric I would tell most parents to actually pay attention to, because it measures how much an individual student improved year over year, regardless of where they started. That’s the closest thing TEA has to an apples-to-apples measure of teaching quality.

For the full TEA breakdown on each campus, including the rating history back to 2019, visit the Lively Middle School page or the Murchison Middle School page.

Lively Middle: The South Austin Crossroads School

Lively sits in a part of the city that is, depending on the block, either old Austin made good or new Austin built fast. The campus draws kids from Travis Heights, Bouldin Creek, the SoCo corridor, the South Lamar pockets, and a handful of further-out neighborhoods where the price-per-square-foot drops considerably. That mix is the school’s strength and its challenge at the same time.

The 65.7% economically disadvantaged rate at Lively is a meaningful piece of context for the score. Closing the Gaps is the TEA domain that penalizes schools hardest when their lower-income students don’t keep pace with state targets, and it’s the domain where Lively is currently working hardest. The Academic Growth number (65) is the one that should genuinely matter to a buyer who is moving into the zone with a strong reader headed to 6th grade, because growth scores tend to track how the school handles students at the higher end of the achievement curve too.

Lively’s trajectory is also worth knowing. The campus went from a B in 2019 down to a D in 2023 and has clawed back to a C with a 77 in 2025. That is movement in the right direction, and it suggests a campus that is actively rebuilding rather than coasting.

Murchison Middle: The Northwest Austin Anchor

Murchison is one of those campuses where the score (88), the demographics, and the home prices all line up the way you’d expect. The school serves Great Hills, Balcones Woods, Anderson Mill (the central pockets, not the Williamson County side), and a wide swath of established northwest Austin neighborhoods built mostly between the late 1970s and the 1990s. The campus has a particularly strong fine arts reputation inside AISD, and the band and orchestra programs send kids on to lead the Anderson High ensembles year after year.

Worth knowing if you’re new to Austin: there are three “Murchison” middle schools in the metro. This one is the AISD campus. There’s also a Pflugerville ISD Murchison and a Round Rock ISD Murchison, and they are completely different schools with different attendance zones. If somebody is telling you “Murchison is great,” ask which district before you start house-hunting.

The Neighborhoods (and Why Lively Costs More Than Murchison)

This is the part of the comparison that surprises buyers from out of town. The Lively zone runs $750K median on closed single-family sales over the trailing 12 months. The Murchison zone runs $646K. Same district, lower-scoring campus, higher prices. Why?

Two reasons. First, location. The Lively zone includes some of the most coveted dirt in central Austin: walkable to South Congress, walkable to Lady Bird Lake, biking distance from downtown, and culturally embedded in the part of the city the rest of the country thinks of when it pictures “Austin.” That premium has been baked into south-of-the-river real estate for two decades and it has nothing to do with the middle school score.

Second, lot count. The Murchison zone is larger and more suburban, with more inventory turning over each year (520 closed SFR vs 297 in the Lively zone). More supply, more comparable sales, and a more established price band. The northwest Austin neighborhoods are excellent value for what they offer, and many of them are getting renovated and refreshed, but they’re not competing with Travis Heights on cool factor or with Bouldin Creek on walkability.

Browse all homes zoned to Lively Middle or all homes zoned to Murchison Middle.

Feeder Pattern Matters More in Middle School Than Most Buyers Realize

The middle school is the bridge, but the high school is where the long game gets played. Per the AISD 2024-25 feeder PDF, Murchison feeds Anderson High School, full stop. One feeder, one path, IB program at the back end. That clarity is part of why buyers pay for the Anderson pyramid.

Lively’s high school assignment is split. The dominant feeder is Austin High School, the historic downtown campus on Lady Bird Lake. A smaller portion of the Lively zone feeds Travis Early College High School. Which one your home feeds into depends on your specific address, so verify with AISD using your street address before you make an offer. (And yes, this is the kind of thing I check for every south Austin buyer I work with, because the Travis ECHS pathway is a genuinely good option for the right student, but it is not Austin High.)

Which School Fits You?

Honest take, after working both sides of this market for years.

You might lean toward Lively if:

• You want to live south of the river in walkable Austin and the middle school is one factor among many, not the dominant one
• Your student is a strong, independent learner who will thrive in a larger, more diverse campus and you want them to grow up in the cultural core of the city
• Austin High School is the long-term target and you’ve confirmed your specific address feeds there
• You’re comfortable with a campus that’s on an upward trajectory but isn’t where Murchison is yet on Academic Growth

You might lean toward Murchison if:

• You want a clean, predictable AISD pyramid from elementary through Anderson High, with no address-by-address feeder surprises
• Music, theater, or orchestra is a serious part of your student’s life and you want them in one of the strongest fine arts middle school programs in central Texas
• You’d rather buy more house for your money in northwest Austin than buy a smaller house in south Austin

If I’m being honest, the score gap is real but it isn’t the whole story. The Lively zone gives you a piece of Austin that almost nothing else in the metro replicates. The Murchison zone gives you an academically stronger campus, a cleaner high school path, and more square footage per dollar. Neither is wrong. The right answer depends on what you’re optimizing for, and that’s a conversation worth having before you write the offer.

Ready to Find Your Home in the Right School Zone?

School zone questions are some of the most consequential ones you’ll ask during a home search, and the answers don’t fit on a real estate listing. After 19+ years and 2,000+ Austin-area properties, I’ve walked buyers through every flavor of this conversation, and I can help you sort through what the data says, what the neighborhoods feel like, and what the trade-offs actually mean for your specific situation. Lets grab coffee and talk about it.

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