San Diego Housing Market News and Analysis

Just to clarify - these are for the school year prior to this, right?

2011 would be the 2010/2011 year?

So we have another year to wait to find out how well the schools are ranked for the year that just ended?

I've been pretty public that I pulled my son from a high API school to a lower one - and had his education step up significantly because of the specific program (seminar) that he was in. My younger son is making the move this year.

API scores are not the end all/be all. But they do help property values. :)

I think its kinda cool that San Elijo Hills Elementary is right there with all the Carmel Valley schools (except Sage and Ocean Air which are 20 pts higher than the rest).

How did the school lose 50 students in 3 years? Essentially 1/8 of the student body disappeared within 3 years? We're they busing kids in before, now they are not any more?

API is just another way to look at demographics. Somehow within the last 3 years the demographics changed. Either a bunch of apartments are now asigned to another school, or they stopped busing in kids, hats my best guess.

How do you read the numbers?

My kids' school got a 912.

Is that a good score, or do I need to move an expensive neighborhood in San Diego County?

In general over 900 is a very good school. Excellent scores are over 925. Over 950 generally puts you in the top tier category (typically Top 10 +/-).

Well, that depends if you feel your kid helped prop up the 912 or if you feel your kid brought the average down :)

damnit damnit... Now I know definitely know it's not the schools, but the lack of walls that sells carmel valley..
Lack of walls, man!!!!!

The boundaries around here have not changed in a decade. Doyle's predominant demographic is children of UCSD graduate students, post doctorates, and staff renting in the area. I.e. kids from educated families with little money (thus a high qualification for reduced price lunches).

At some point in time, I discovered a way to obtain spreadsheets of very detailed enrollment statistics for any school in San Diego Unified. Doyle's reduction in students was almost entirely due to accepting fewer choice (transfer) students. In Doyle's defense, they were simply too damned big - over 900 students at their peak. Many grade schools in San Diego Unified are not even half that size.

Interesting. I'm pretty happy to have just bought in South 4S Ranch with the following:

Stone Ranch Elementary 963 10 / 7

Also, Del Norte now has the top scores in PUSD.
(Admittedly, this is all splitting hairs and my kids will not be in HS for 12 more years or so...)
And yes, I realize that schools in La Jolla and Carmel Valley are a bit higher. :)

I'm a bit confused by the whole "statewide rank" and "similar schools rank."
I guess the first compares you to all schools, and the second compares you to schools with a similar demographic or income.

But here's where I get confused:

Rancho Santa Fe Elementary School District:
R. Roger Rowe Elemntary: 951 10 / 10

I am really interested that it has a 10 in similar schools with a score of 951, while my local school has a 7 in similar schools with a score of 963.

Does this imply that the demographics of 4S are in a higher category by some measurement (surely not income!) than the demographics or RSF?

Or, if it is income-based, does it mean that the kids of top income earners statewide (RSF and similar areas) actually have a lower average score than the kids of upper middle class professional types who live in 4S?

Interesting also how Pacific Rim Elementary in Carlsbad gets a 975, which I think puts it at somewhere about #5 countywide.

My grandfather lives very near Pacific Rim in a very large community of townhouses(Poinsettia/Batiquitos area). Demographically, that townhouse area seems very middle class and there are also several apartment complexes nearby.

I'm surprised that the score is so high. Granted, there are also lots of $million+ homes especially south of Poinsettia, so I wonder if they also feed into Pacific Rim Elementary. What makes this school so successful?

so we do have a very good explanation of why the API rose.

once again, API changed only due to demographic change (in this case removal of transfer students).

I totally agree, API has a lot more to do with demographic than how well a school educate the kids. I personally think, as long as the school is ranked 8+ (in HS), it should have enough students in AP level classes to keep the classes full and all the AP classes to be available. It's only when you drop to the lower API schools, where you might not have enough AP level students to keep all AP classes full. Which would have a higher chance of AP class being canceled due to low interest.

Based on my own experiences and seeing my cousins who just graduated HS this year, students taking AP classes tend to hang out with each other. So, even if you go to a school with API score of a 1, you'll see the valedictorians and AP students hang out with each others. So, I'd only use API score to gauge the availability of AP classes and the amount of students that are capable of taking those AP classes. I wouldn't read too much more into it.

As an AP teacher I can assure you this is correct for most students, not just your cousins. Oftentimes AP kids will play the same sports together and tend to date other AP kids.

When my own kids are old enough for high school I'll want them to be in AP classes just so they'll hopefully have a better peer group.

Yep.

I find the fact API scores are 3 digits to be tremendously misleading. The difference between a 904 and a 954 is not tremendous. A good student will thrive at either of those hypothetical schools, and a screw-up will still screw-up. The only value that is truly interesting is the "Similar Schools Rank". Carlsbad schools, for example, tend to have high API scores, but much lower Similar Schools scores; they aren't doing as much with the material they're being given compared to a lot of similar schools. Fallbrook has the opposite effect; a lot of its schools overperform relative to similar schools.

Poway District, despite having a sterling reputation, is actually quite mediocre compared to other similar schools. RB High and Westview High in particular have high API scores, but are relatively weak compared to similar schools. If you just look at API you might say "Those are good schools", but there's actually a decent chance if you took your student out of there and put them elsewhere they'd actually do better.

Essbee, the bulk of properties located inside the covenant (RSF being one of those areas) are MUCH older than those in 4S Ranch (which I presume attracts mostly young families headed by one or more "professional worker-bee" parents).

This is NOT the case with RSF. The majority of households there are likely headed by retirees and small biz owners (who live off investments and profits). Believe it or not, one could purchase a <=3000 sf SFR (likely "cosmetic fixer") inside the covenant just 20 years ago for $275K to $400K! Just because SFRs located in a particular exclusive "enclave" in CA (ie. LJ Muirlands, RSF/Fairbanks, Palos Verdes, Pebble Beach) are "expensive" by today's standards, doesn't necessarily mean that the bulk of its owners are necessarily "highly-educated" or even have any minor children in residence. I have absolutely no doubt that many of the RSF's owners *grandchildren* are a large segment of the children who attend RSF's elementary school(s). It's very possible that they and their parent[s] (the children of "covenant-homeowners") actually reside in the parents home. These "parents" aren't necessarily "highly educated." There is always a reason young parents bring their children "back home" to live with parents.

It's such an oft-touted fallacy on this site that average AGI on income tax returns is somehow a measure of an area's residents' "net worth" or "wealth." Nothing could be further from the truth. Often, a higher median AGI for any area simply means the population there is younger overall and is currently paying more income tax. In addition, this younger, "higher-taxable-income worker-bee set" is more often than not MUCH more indebted than its forebears who often have little to zero mortgage and zero consumer debt.

In fact, Essbee, the area you left in Clairemont likely has far more owners with a MUCH higher "net worth" than the area you moved to!

I don't know exactly what criteria greatschools.org uses to rate schools' demographic data. It may be have to do with the teacher-student ratio or the amount of applications parents file with the district to obtain a free or reduced-price lunch for their child(ren) at a particular school. Just because a school is located in RSF, LJ or PL doesn't in any way mean the bulk of their students' parents are necessarily of means or that they or the student(s) grandparents are even qualified to help them with homework. The students' parents could very well be living in subsidized housing in the area, have transferred their kids to that school from another area or be living with their parents or more established siblings due to their inability to earn enough money to support their children.

I can't even begin to tell you how many (mostly senior) homeowners I know who own valuable paid-off residences in SD's finest neighborhoods and possess only a GED, previous state occupational licenses, "ROP" Certificate, a high-school diploma ... or even less.

In a nutshell, in more established areas, educational level of homeowners has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with property values or net worth of the residents there. Hence, some of the schools in those well-established areas which greatschools.org has rated lower are actually very good schools. The student-teacher ratio is typically less because there are less students living in the attendance area and less transfer applications because the "low" (lol) API score scares many parents from making application to these schools.

Yeah the ap students do tend to hang together.

I think it's called "assortive mating".

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jun/...

The grand jury just commended Poway Unified for the significant improvement in dropout rate, AP participation, and overall increase in API.

So did the grand jury essentially just commended PUSD for the demographic shift it has seen? After all, SD's Asian population grew from 249k to 333k during this decade, and I would say the majority of these new Asians ended up either in PUSD or CV, essentially the 56 corridor.

The only part of PUSD that did not see significant growth in the Asian population is old Poway, an area served by Valley Elementary. And that school only saw a bump from 792 API in 2003 to 807 on the latest release. Not exactly the type of stellar improvement that deserves a grand jury special report.

No kidding... Just look at what they get for those cookie cutters North of the 56...

CE

Geeks always "cliq" up! They have to... In order to survive the jocks... Like the way sardines swarm when the marlin attack!

Kidding of course.

But all jokes aside the whole "Birds of a feather" thing is true but not only is it true... It's helpful.

Smart people enable smart people and everyone becomes better for it.

I pray my childern will lean towards the geeky side and not the jock (like thier old man) or popular girl side.

:P

CE

Excuse me but WTF is the grand jury doing rating schools. You nailed it OCR, its the students that got much better not the schools themselves.

I am confused. Why do we need a grand jury to congratulate school district? I thought grand jury was some construct of the legal system. Educate me please!

Here's a little tip for those of you with school aged kids, encourage them to take AP classes, not just for the friends but for the college credit. Mine is now at a University and I was pleasantly suprised to see that online he has almost a year of school knocked out just because of the AP classes. I don't believe that he will finish a year early, but it should make it easier to finish in 4 years. When your kid takes an AP class there is a private comapany that charges $70 per class to take a test (which I thought was a racket) and when they get into college that same company charges for you to send the test results to the university (another racket). But now that it's in the rear view mirror, that was money well spent. I'm burping up about 20k per year, per kid for college, so that $70 test seems like a bargain if it will save me 10k or 20k by not having them go an extra semester or two. At these prices, I'd rather they don't spend 5 1/2 years on their undergraduate degree like I did. If you get them to take the AP classes and pay for the tests, the odds will increase that they wont.

Another helpful tactic is that the AP classes give you credit for many of the 101 classes. Many universities give incoming freshman first dibs at classes, then graduating seniors, then seniors, then juniors, and sophmores go last. If your AP kid uses their freshman year class selection trump card to take sophmore level courses, when they are toiling around trying to crash classes as a sophmore they won't be taking the same classes as other sophmores. I remember having to pick up sophmore classes at junior colleges or at wacky hours just because of the overcrowding. Just getting classes was responsible for at lease one semester of dealay in my graduation. Beer, girls and fraternity life can be blamed for the rest.

Here's another tip. Take classes at JC instead of AP class. Not all AP class (at least back when I went to college) can be used to replace UCSD's GE class but JC class are 100% transferable. So, I only took about 3-4 AP classes. But I took so many JC class that I cleared almost all of my GE, which is about a year worth of classes. That allow me to only need to take 3 classes each quarter and still graduate in 4. Which then allow me to work more during school, so I have a lot of working experiences by the time I graduate college. Not just summer intern.

Always good to do AP classes if possible, downside in the UC system is if you have too many credits, it could be a bad thing when I went (20 years ago). Maybe it's different now, but if you major in engineering, your classes are pretty much set and many upper division classes are only offered once a year so it's really hard to graduate in 4 years. Maybe they will be ok with it now since I read about kids with like 15 AP classes now and some crazy 4.6 gpa.

With some classes curved and then failing half (half gets a C- or lower), that alone will keep you another year around college (good times though!).

My brother almost got kicked out of UC since he had so many credits from being double engr and pre-med major.

I also had a ton from taking other "fun" classes and changing majors and always had so many units that I always got my classes since my registration times were the same as people a year ahead like you said.

When I went to UCSD 10+ years ago, the average HS GPA for the entering engineering students was ~4.7 and SAT was ~1500 (max was 1600 back then). So, I don't think high GPA is a modern phenomenon.

Yes, the engineering class are set, but your math, your GE, your physics classes are not set. IIRC, AP calculus can give you credit, but you still had to take the UC's calculus class. However, since I took my calculus at a JC, I was able to get my 1st two calculus class cleared.

Upper division classes wasn't that limited at UCSD 10+ years ago. I'm not sure how it is today. But it might be what you're describing, due to budget cuts.

Like you, I had so many credits entering UCSD that I had no problem signing up for class, since my registration times were before my classmates.

the harper'smagazine index statistics for this month say:

percentage of households earning over 100,000 whose kids are attending community college: 22%.

Just because the school is in a rich neighbor hood does not mean they will have better schools or will score higher API scores. It all starts with the Principal/Founder, Teachers, Parent involvement and most of all our children.

My kids are being educated in the City Of Chino (San Bernardino County) at Oxford Preparatory Academy (Public School) and for our inaugural year (2010-2011) we scored an API score of 958. This year (2011-2012) our score was 975 and we score a 10/10 for schools with our similar demographics.

Please visit the following link so that it can clarify what an API score consists of. I believe it will help with your decision.

http://www.greatschools.org/students/loc...

In the end it all depends on a few factors...
1. Parent Involvement
2. Student Participation
3. Teachers and curriculum offered

If you feel that the teachers are great and your children feel safe and happy at the school, then they will have a balanced education and will prosper.