<p>I live in a very high API school district. I would turn this statement around and say that I believe the school is not focused enough on education and spends too much time teaching to the test. The STAR test, the CAHSEE, AP tests, SAT IIs, you name it, that’s what the school targets. The STAR test trumps everything because it’s used to determine the API. In elementary school it consists of English and math; guess what subjects get short shrift in the classroom as a result? History, geography, science, art, PE. My son’s 4th grade teacher proudly told me that she loved the curriculum that year because it tracks so well to the STAR test. I was appalled. </p>
<p>The result of this, in my experience, is that kids study to do well on tests, period. They have little curiosity about their subjects, are not motivated to explore anything in a deeper way, and constantly ask “will this be on the test?”. This is rational enough behavior on their parts, but are these kids really being well-served by our schools? Despite the trumpeting of API scores by my local school district and others, I do wonder.</p>
<p>I’m not sure that this is a problem unique to California at any rate. In general I’ve seen school administrators and teachers who do care about their students, parents who are very involved in a variety of different ways within the school district, and a community that supports its local schools with energy, time and money to make up for the state shortfall.</p>
<p>3bm103 - High Tech in San Diego has both a middle and highschool. We have known kids that have gone to both and loved it and others that left after middle school to come back to our hs because they did not like it. One of our friends does not like how they set up math at the school so his D is coming to our hs as a freshman in the fall.</p>
<p>My D has two friends graduating that love High Tech although from what D has heard from them she does not think the school would have challenged her in the way she likes.</p>
<p>vballmom, you are SO right! My D took AP US History during the 2008 election/inauguration time. Not ONCE did they discuss this historic election. There’s no time, at parents’ night the teacher informed us that his job was to prepare the kids to take the AP test, not to instill curiosity, discuss issues, etc. Most certainly she does not remember a thing now–most AP classes KILLED whatever interest she’d had in the subject. I exempted my D from the STAR test–her sleep was more important than adding her high scores to her school’s data!</p>
<p>If you are considering the bay area…consider the east bay. Piedmont in the Oakland/Berkeley corridor and further east is Orinda, Lafayette, and Moraga. Piedmont High is fairly small - about 900 students.</p>
<p>Vballmom - same experience here at local HS and teaching to the test. </p>
<p>RE: High Tech High. It’s apparently dealing with budget cuts. FYI it’s located in a renovated navy base, so it’s on a campus with stores and restaurants. I don’t think it’s a neighborhood school, so you get some flexibility on housing.</p>
<p>Californians: I am just curious - has anyone read “High School Confidential”? If so, have you discussed it with your kids? Does it reflect reality at all?</p>
<p>nothing against the original poster. california has enough on its plate. our resources are being stretched to the limit! for everybody who was rolling out the red carpet to this person, how about we get the homeless off of our streets first? u probably don’t care about ‘those people’ though, since u rarely see them in rpv, la jolla, fremont, etc. </p>
<p>this state is becoming increasingly more difficult for average income earners to reside comfortably in (let alone find a good school unless u are very resourceful!). if i hear one more parent at my son’s school complain about how tight things are “in this economy” when i know where they live (and it’s a high-income area), i might scream. we–californians–seem to be perfectly fine with erasing or gentrifying certain populations from our cities (who have probably also lived here forever, calalum)… yet welcome those who can afford it. be honest with yourselves: once the original poster described her situation “we’re full pay at usc” , husband’s an expat in asia, blahblahblah, you got a certain picture in your mind of this person, and she ‘fit’ what u consider to be the ideal person to relocate to california. while each and every day there are others…less ideal… who are here right now trying to hold on to their job/house/seat in a ‘good’ high school. </p>
<p>Seconding avoidingwork’s comments–Piedmont is a great school and there should be rental housing available. I think her son would love the Orinda/Lafayette/Moraga schools.
I also think her son would have a decent shot of fitting in with the student bodies at these schools. It can be hard coming back from expat assignments, but there were a few expats at our school.</p>
<p>Marin County parent here. The public schools in southern Marin are excellent. The Tamalpais Union High School District has three schools - Tamalpais in Mill Valley, Redwood in Larkspur, and Sir Francis Drake in San Anselmo. They have rather different personas but all three graduate well-prepared students. My kids went to Redwood, then matriculated to extremely selective universities (think one-letter) and are holding their own very nicely. Of course they are bright kids, but more importantly they were well schooled in the fundamentals and learned good study habits. While there are plenty of type A parents, there is less pressure to be a superstar than in some of the South Bay schools, and the district encourages students to take no more than 2 AP or honors classes a year. Redwood does well in the College Sweepstakes every year, placing students at Ivies, top UC’s, etc. While the area is in general affluent, there is a fair amount of diversity in the student bodies (more at Tamalpais, probably, than at the other two schools). Each school has a designated district from which it draws, but it’s in general not difficult to get an intra-district transfer.</p>
<p>Marin’s greatest advantages are its incredible natural beauty and convenience to San Francisco - greatest disadvantage is cost of living.</p>
<p>Calimami, the decision to come to CA would be solely mine and not based on what anyone on here says. The whole point of having this forum is to get opinions and not judgments, thank you.</p>
<p>Would you rather that I come empty handed and use up your tax dollars? I only said all those things about paying for USC etc (which is true and so are 40% of other USC parents who also are full pay), because of your first post, little do you know of my family situation (maybe we worked out as* of for 30 years to collect money for older sons education!).</p>
<p>AND I also said in my post that I am looking for avg schools with avg home prices, which means that I am not in the ‘enviable’ range you may be thinking of. We are U.S. citizens and we can go where we want. Proud to be an American and have the choices and freedom that this country offers to all its citizens.</p>
<p>I think there have been quite a few great recommendations on this thread. I agree with posters who have pointed out that it’s definitely possible to live more inexpensively in some great school districts; this is particularly true if you’re looking to rent, not buy. Good luck with your decision!</p>
<p>There’s one more tool that might be useful to you. It’s the “Stat Finder” website created by the University of California: [University</a> of California: StatFinder](<a href=“http://statfinder.ucop.edu/]University”>http://statfinder.ucop.edu/). At this website, you can enter the name of any California high school and see what percentage of students are admitted into the UC system; you can also see how students from each high school fared later when they were students in the UC, because it will display the average college gpa. Sometimes parents can make a mistake and think, “My son or daughter has to be in the top ten percent at this high school to get into the University of California,” but that isn’t always the case. Thus, if you enter some of the Fremont Union high schools by name, you can see that the UC system takes around 30% of the senior class from some of these schools.</p>
<p>The one thing about LAUSD is we have a lot of choice with Charters, Magnets and Open Enrollment. We have some of the worst schools and some of the best. But it has taken away the need to live in a certain neighborhood if you go this route.</p>
<p>I would like to add that majority of CC forum members have been kind and resourceful and if not for this site I would never have even dreamed of older son getting into top notch schools such as WashU, USC and UT to name 3 of the 6 schools he got into and yes with an average GPA. He barely makes the top 30% in our HS here, amongst the driven parents and even more driven kids he managed to carve out a nice niche for himself and not go insane.</p>
<p>This is the beauty of education - you take what you want out of it, no one forces anybody.</p>
<p>Thank you for all the support and kindness that you give for those who come here seeking advise. </p>
<p>pixeljig
I sent you a PM. lets talk about mid peninsula HS alternatives. PA has only 2 HS, both with very competrtive student bodies. there are alternatives, particularily if you are thinking of renting on the peninsula.</p>
<p>Yes, these are GREAT. (And I did mention CC County.) Southern Marin is also great, as someone mentioned. Again, however, all of these great districts require cash, quite a bit of it.</p>
<p>Regarding post 35, I hardly see myself as “embittered,” having been fortunate enough to have enrolled my children in a private. Rather, I see myself as increasingly regretful and dismayed, as one who works in and with the public schools. I see the parents on this thread as offering in some cases broad perspectives, in some cases anecdotal, the latter based on very narrow and particular experience (good or bad). In sum, I think the response they’re giving to the OP, consciously and unconsciously, is that there is huge variation, and much of what used to pass for “okay,” “decent,” and even “better” or “superior,” might be in a different category right now. Thus, without large sums of cash, a great deal of research (and/or luck) should be considered the substitute strategy for the OP. Just four years ago even, many schools which were listed as terrific options on Greatschools.org are no longer as great. Further, within the last two years, one sees measurable changes. </p>
<p>For example, one of the desirable public high schools in the East Bay (it’s often in the news, in fact, but I don’t think has been mentioned here) now finds itself, as of last year, because of rapidly deteriorating neighboring districts, with overcrowding due to aggressive encroachment by students living in those other districts. Pretty desperate and illegal steps are being taken by those outside the allowable boundaries of this h.s. The result is classes that are between 45 and 60 in student enrollment. That began to happen just two years ago, due to crime and other intolerable working conditions for teachers and children in the neighboring districts. At the desirable public, the same fine teachers are still there, but it is making it quite difficult even for the more capable students to achieve the same results as prior to 2 years ago, because of horrendous class size which has resulted in literally SRO in some cases. (They’re sitting on the floor.) </p>
<p>It’s hard to judge, if one’s school is doing well or even just “okay,” the extent of the crisis overall in CA education for others, and particularly if one has not had a child in the publics within the last 3-4 years. It’s a lot less predictable, and if I were the OP, I would be looking for some stability, some predictability, with which to make an enlightened decision. This is why I responded that, were I seriously considering CA, I would probaby not do so immediately (because of the time needed for research) unless I had lots of cash. I don’t think that’s bitterness; it’s realism.</p>
<p>Yes, there are alternatives to bi-modal, but these alternatives have decreased in number in the last several years, with each passing year. If I had time, I would visit and research. If I didn’t, I would bring money. If I had neither, I would select a state that has had a more consistently stable educational and state-budget history than CA has had over the last 6-10 years. That is, unless I were just a very optimistic and trusting person who tends to have excellent luck with little effort. That’s also a possibility.</p>
<p>Great Schools is another good, general website if you want to pull up the API scores for school in a district, and I think it also has links to housing information. I’m another CA parent, South SF Bay area, but not in the illustrious areas or school districts posted above. I would agree with the description of schools as bi-modal. My sister who lives in the Southeast is appalled by the lack of programs in my kids’ schools compared to hers. However, I also agree that kids can do well anyway, blossoming where planted. So, would I buy in my neighborhood again, what we thought was going to be a starter home. NO. Were my children irreparably damaged by their respective educational experiences. Again, no. My older kiddo is at a “top” uni. My younger child who does not take as easily to academics would have been mincemeat at a school like Lynbrook, yet she really is quite insightful and bright in a less-testable way. I think you should figure out a few places you would really like to live (less broadly than SF,SD, LA ) and then scope out the schools. I also agree that many places you may be able to find rentals more reasonably than buying–or-- in this economy, you may also find some affordable smaller homes in good areas, which was harder several years ago. Welcome (in advance) to CA! We may have a lousy state economy right now, but the weather rocks!</p>
<p>I don’t recall the OP asking for an academic study of the quality of education in California. She asked, basically, if anybody knew of some decent high schools in the state. Anecdotal evidence is perfectly acceptable for this, as far as I’m concerned. She can always research the school profile or API herself if she wants to. Aditionally, I don’t think the OP asked if she could find a public school equivalent to Choate. </p>
<p>Sorry it’s “anecdotal” - my sister has three kids in the Torrance school district. Right now. This is not a rich area, I would say their combined income is around 75-80K - not exhorbitant for two earners in California. From what I see of her kid’s schools they are not crumbling and are perfectly acceptable. Strapped for cash like everywhere else, but certainly not the Blackboard Jungle. Her eldest just went off to college - not Harvard but he wasn’t destined for there regardless of where he went to HS.</p>
<p>My kid is not Harvard material, no matter which school he goes to. I will be plenty happy if he makes it to USC like his brother did. That too is no ordinary feat nowadays.</p>
<p>I thought the OP said her husband lost his job and they were thinking of moving to CA. Unemployment is high in CA. I have friends looking for jobs in CA. I don’t recommend moving to CA. unless your husband has a job offer or you have friends/family who will house you while you and your husband look for jobs. The job market is tough. Also, it is in the news that the CA budget is hurting and public schools feel the impact of a declining budget.</p>