San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

When I lived there, people raved about Ashley Falls Elementary, of course that was a while ago. I think Carmel Valley schools are good. It's not Poway School District, but it's up there. It's not private, but better than some public.

Don't blindly pursue the "Best of the best" when it comes to high schools.

Remember that many great universities often have policy to allow in the top few percent of each high school graduating class, with no regard to how low-achieving a school is. It helps to put your smart kid into a high shool that is well-stocked with dummies, or at least stocked with a good percentage of college-bound kids who are also UNDER-achievers!

Consider Silicon Valley. Parents are getting smarter up here, and moving to high school districts with schools just "good enough" to provide reasonable (college-bound) education..yet offer a LESS-competitive academic environment (compared to say Cupertine and Palo Alto districts). That way your hard-working kids can easily place themselves into top 5% of that high school's graduating class, securing a place in elite universities.

Do not underestimate just how difficult it is for very smart, very hard-working kids to place in top 5% in the most competitive CA high school districts. It can drive kids right into psychological breakdown (or suicide), particularly when parents have high expectations for their kids yet place them in elite schools. This is a hot topic of conservation (and strategy-plotting) for the very demanding Asian parents all over Silicon Valley and Bay Area.

So, my question is:

A kid scored SAT 1680 but graduate top 5% from Mira Mesa High
vs.
A kid scored SAT 1750 but graduate 50% from Torry Pine High.

Who would have better chance to get into elite universities ?

So, my question is:

A kid scored SAT 1680 but graduate top 5% from Mira Mesa High
vs.
A kid scored SAT 1750 but graduate 50% from Torry Pine High.

My question is, would going to Torrey Pines High instead of Mira Mesa High contribute 70 extra points to a kid's SAT score? SAT is basically an IQ test, it's largely genetic.

Back when I was in HS (MMHS alumni btw), SAT score was max at 1600. I know a few that got between 1500-1600 and were valedictorians, they all went to Ivy Leagues (Harvard & Yale are the two that came to my mind). Most of the top 10-15% in my year went to UCSD, BYU, UCLA, UCB, UCI, and other universities in that level of competitiveness. I don't know where the top 50% of Torrey Pine High students went, so I can't really tell you.

Unless you believe that kids live in MM are actually much more stupider than kids live in TP, then yes, kids going to TP actually scroed about 300+ point above MMHS kids.
It is a landslide: 1771 vs 1449 (average score from 06-07)

I do believe that there's statistically significant difference between kids in MMHS and kids in TPHS. That's why API scores are lower and that's why SATs are lower. In TPHS, 59% of students have at least one parent with a postgraduate degree. In MMHS, this number is 6%.

I don't really think that means the kids in MM are "generically" stupider.

The purpose of my question is for parents with good job/stable marriage to justify the purchase of home in CV vs MM.

One thing many people don't realize is that in elementary grades, public schools have a 20-1 student-teacher ratio (I forget exactly grades follow this requirement). Private schools don't have to match this and rarely do. I'd say that is one major advantage for the nicer public schools.

Also, parents who have kids with issues who can't get their way at a public school will go private. I wouldn't say that is a major contributor, but something to think about.

I can't imagine a nicer environment for students than these Carmel Valley schools. That isn't to say you won't get a bad teacher or have bad experiences with other students.

With 1 child, living in a less expensive neighborhood and going with a private school may be viable, but with 2, you are looking at 40K/year and investing in the Carmel Vally house starts to look more economically sound.

Even if I can/or want to afford the private school, I think it might be a little harder for my kids to be the top 5% in a private school than in MMHS.

You'll have a hard time finding a school with demographics of TPHS that has average SAT below 1700.

There's no doubt that an average kid in TPHS is considerably more intelligent than an average kid in MMHS. The question that remains is whether a smart kid from MMHS would be pulled ahead by a combination of peer pressure and good tutoring to increase his SAT by 70 points if he went to TPHS instead.

Does it really matter to get that extra 70 points ? If you put in an application that say you are top 5% from the school v.s. just being average (from TPHS), and SAT 1680 vs 1750, do you have better chance to get into an elite university ?

If the chace is about the same, then maybe my kid will have a better childhood living in MM.

Going by API is as useful as using median house price. All API does is tell you the average of all the kids. If you divide it up by race, you' see the API score for white students in TPHS is 851, while in MMHS it's 815. The major difference is the Asian students. In TPHS, their API score is 923 vs 835 for MMHS. Since MMHS have students who are also just learning English, you can assume that might be part of the reason why there's such a disparity.

Here's a strictly anectdotal, but true, story.

Husband's sister and her family lived in the Philly metro area - in one of the nicer suburbs. Then a job transfer moved them to Kentucky - where the schools sucked. But the kids were motivated and husband's sister was a motivated mom - pushed her kids academically, supplementing what they were getting in school.

Nephew graduates top of his class. He got high test scores. Not surprising... He was the same smart kid in Kentucky going to crappy schools that he was when he was going to better school in the Philly burbs.

He applies to Wharton, is accepted with scholarships.

If he'd applied from a philly suburb with the same test scores, he'd have been turned down. They wanted geographic diversity and he was one of 2 students accepted from Kentucky. From a very small pool that applied There were thousands of students applying from the Philly metro area.

So... sometimes going to a crappy school IS a way to get into an Ivy college.

Well, I guess the old rules from my country still apply here:

The best school always has:

1st grade student
2nd grade teacher
3rd grade school (hardware)
(since the school has been good for many many years with too many traditions, hence old buildings...etc)

I would think and average to good student would do better in a private school with smaller class sizes. A well above average student would do better at one of the top public schools as they have more resources for AP courses that a private school simply could not match. Where i grew up back East the top public school students always were eons ahead of the top private school students.

I'm a former teacher and IMO the biggest thing to look for in a school is parental involvement. It also helps if the school is hard to get in to whether it's public or private. Schools that make you jump through a few hoops (with lotteries and other prerequisites) weed out the parents and kids that don't care about education.

Personally, I'm a lot more concerned about the moral climate of a school than the academic climate, but the two often go hand in hand. I'm not nearly as concerned with my kids getting into elite colleges as I am with them doing well and becoming well rounded in high school.
I've seen too many people with elite college degrees who have done nothing with them.

All good points. I know many people in college who slept through high school and aced college. They had IQs, but were lazy in high school. So need the genetic high IQ, HS is not really important unless you want Ivy League. Is Ivy league really worth it? The WSJ article doesn't have third comparison which is in state school comparison. It would really tilt in favor of SDSU as long as you weren't looking for special needs such as hanging with Georgetown beltway crowd, etc

http://wsjclassroom.com/archive/05mar/re...

I think you most of you are missing big picture which is grad/professional schools. Better to go to average school like SDSU and get 3.5GPA, then you could have much better chance to get into Harvard Med, then if you went to MIT Undergrad and get 2.0 GPA with same MCAT score. I'd pick the MIT grad, but enough colleges would pick SDSU grad.

Well said. How do you gauge this ?
Visits to the school or crashing the PTA meetings ?

Also an excellent point. This is the "strategy" I used. Going in, it wasn't really a strategy. I just went to my local university because it was cheap and convenient. In hindsite, I'm sold on big state party schools for undergrad, followed by a serious grad school. I give this advice to as many young'ns as I can.

It saves money and gives you time to be a kid for another four years. The pace and intensity at serious private colleges is not, in my opinion, a very healthy or happy one.

All of the above. If possible, visit the school and skulk around the classrooms without them walking you around as an official visitor. Then you can see what's really going on in the rooms. This, I'm sure is easier for a woman to get away with then a man so you'd have to send your wife.

I wouldn't go by what parents who send their kids to the school say either. They wouldn't be sending their kid there if they had any major complaints. And most people are not nearly as picky as I am about schools not having worked at one and seen what goes on (e.g. Bad teachers who are mean to the kids and don't get fired, improper supervision on fieldtrips, lazy teachers who don't teach,etc.).

You have to remember that school aged kids are much more influenced by their peers than by their parents, so choosing a school with nice kids and a healthy environment really is critical. It's much more important than just looking at test scores.
It doesn't matter how good the school is academically if your kids get mixed up with a bunch of stoners who don't even graduate high school.

One of my daughters went to Ashley Falls and all schools in the Del Mar School district are excellent.( Pretty sure the highest in the county over Poway as well ) They get the required stuff out of the way 2/3 of the way through the year and the last third is spent on advanced material. Yes the Asian kids pull up the API but most of these kids come from well educated parents. The way they get around the 1 teacher to 20 kids class size is they will sometimes have a teacher's assistant and many times 2 parent volunteers ( who generally hold 4 year or advanced degrees.) Definite advantage to have 3 to 4 "teachers" assisting at all times. The school district also raises quite a bit of money for the foundation which is used for more specialized classes.

By the way, schools in San Diego Unified vary wildly. There are plenty of good schools to be found there.

bump

I also think something to remember is to send your kids to schools that fit thier personality. A friends family had 3 daughters, each about 14 months apart. These girls are all smart, beautiful, and rich (even in the pigg sense); and each went to a different school. The eldest was in my class at a private catholic school. The middle went to the largest public school in the county. The youngest went to private ivy league prep boarding schools.

All three ended up in good private west coast colleges.

Ask your kids where they want to go. Cause it is more any important that the kids are involved and want to be involved than if it is 20-1 or 25-1 teacher ratios. Especially in HS, it is important to involve your kids in the decision to help make sure it is their decision also. All the kids I knew who didnt get a choice never did quite as well as those who chose to be there, even if their parents both had advanced degrees. Motivation matters.

Finally a thread where I have some personal knowledge and feel like I can comment! Carmel Valley schools are very good by many measures, but where they really fall apart is with the GATE kids prior to the 7th grade level. If your kid is bored with the grade level work, then you are out of luck. San Diego Unified does a much better job of this with their Seminar program. In a small private school with great ratios, each child gets so much individual attention to assist them with their weaknesses, but also challenge them with their strengths and keep them from getting bored.

cvmom - do you know if the ratios are actually better in private schools ? I have heard that they are not typically better than the 20-1 required in the younger public school grades.

Any specific examples ?

In the small private school that my children attend in Carmel Valley, the ratios are great. Maximum 22 kids per grade--3 teachers in K, 2 in 1st grade, 1.5 in all other grades up through 6. Plus full-time music, Spanish, and computer teachers who serve the whole school. The level of tailoring of the curriculum to each individual is impressive. In my evaluations of my public schools (Carmel Creek, Solana Pacific, CVMS), the lower grades do not have a comparable solution for individualized work plans.

I'm sure every private school is different. However, based on my research, Mission Bay Montessori have 2 teachers in every classroom of max 24 kids for K-3rd grade. For 4th-6th grade, it's 1 teacher for every 24 students.

One thing that I don't think anyone has touched on yet is how your child feels. I think either choice - a CV public school or a private school will provide a good academic environment, but if your child is unhappy it won't matter.

I went to all of them in San Diego--public, private, and parochial. I had great experiences at some, not so great experiences at others. There was a year when I was miserable...when my parents saw this they pulled me out and I chose where I wanted to go. As a result, I excelled academically and my overall happiness improved greatly.

Another important point is extracurricular activities..it is no longer about who has the highest SAT score. Universities are looking for well rounded individuals.

Thanks. That's interesting.

So, you live in Carmel Valley and you send your kids to private school ?

That's just wierd. Not in a bad way. Just that I expect people to live in Carmel Valley so they can send their kids to the nice, free schools there.

If I sent my kids to private school, I certainly wouldn't live in CV, even if the school were there.