School Districts in San Diego County

[PerryChase]

I don’t have kids so I have no idea about school districts in San Diego. My brother and wife have a baby and they currently live in a townhouse in La Jolla/UTC by the 5 freeway. He’s looking to move to a SFR when prices are right.

What are the best school districts in SD Diego County? Coastal San Diego would be preferable. Do you guys have any input on private schools? The French-American school in Clairemont sounds pretty good to me.

[sdrealtor]

Best public school districts along the coast are between Carmel Valley and South Carlsbad. With a couple exceptions, most elementary schools in these areas have API scores above 800 which is kind like the Mendoza Line for the top ranked schools.

[PerryChase]

What’s so great about the Poway school district? I hear a lot about that district. Are there variation within that district?

I guess one would have to look at the API score of the individual school within one’s own neighborhood.

[sdrealtor]

Absolutely, but make sure you check into the API scores that are available cross referenced with demographics. You can find them at http://www.greatschools.net among other places. The a 20 point difference between two schools can easily be attributable to one school have a very homogenous student body while another has just enough economically disadvantaged students (5% usually does it) to make average API score lower.

[an]

sdrealtor, that’s a very good site. I think typically, schools that are more diverse tend to have lower total score, if you look closer at the number for each race, you’ll see that even from school that have mid 700 API score, the asian / white kids tend to get around 800 and above. One big exception is Preuss School UCSD. That school, the majority are not white and their total API is 861. That school only accept low income students. It just come to show that with the right environment, most people can succeed, regardless of race or socio-economic circumstances.

[powayseller]

San Diego Magazine’s July 2006 issue listed the top 8 high schools in San Diego. ALL FOUR POWAY SCHOOLS ARE ON THE LIST. Poway High School was noted by the magazine for the many teachers with Master’s degrees. I did not read the article, so I don’t know all the criteria that were used.

Two of the 3 high schools in the San Dieguito Union School District, which serves students in Solana Beach, Del Mar, and Encinitas, made the list; La Costa Canyon High, the 3rd school in that district, did not.

“800 Club”
Top High Schools
Coronado CORONADO
La Jolla LA JOLLA
Mt. Carmel POWAY
Poway High POWAY
Rancho Bernardo POWAY
San Dieguito ENCINITAS, San Dieguito Union Schools
Torrey Pines CARMEL VALLEY, San Dieguito Union
Westview POWAY

Asianautica, the reason Preuss has high API, is because it is made of parents who value education, because only the parents who took the time to investigate about this school, participate in the competitive entry process, and drive to it, are there. It is the parent’s emphasis on education that determined the school’s API, and as we discussed in another thread, poverty and lower socioeconomic standing and cultural factors make education less important to some groups. So Preuss is an example of selective bias. If you can go in to the lowest-ranked San Diego school, convert it to a Preuss style school, then let’s see if the API score is as high as the score of the “optional” Preuss. Then we can truly see if the difference is the parents or the teachers.

[Author]

Posts