What Scores Mean

San Diego Unified School District

With an enrollment of about 131,245 the San Diego Unified School District is the largest in the county and the second largest in the state.

The district includes 114 elementary schools, 23 middle, 27 high, 10 alternative, 34 charter and 18 described as alternate.

Its demographics and ethnic groups are diverse, its scores across the spectrum, the needs of its students varied. For these reasons and because it is large, the district offers parents many choices in the education of their children. These choices include:

• Charter schools, which are allowed to deviate from the state education code and use methods that teachers and parents, working together, deem effective. The 34 charters include Preuss, a middle-high school located on the campus of the University of California at La Jolla and run with the help of university. Preuss was started to boost minority enrollments at colleges.

• Magnet schools. To encourage diversity, these schools offer enriched programs to encourage students to transfer out of their home schools. These programs may emphasize math-science, Spanish-English immersion, creative and performing arts, etc.

• Gifted programs for high-achieving kids.

• Neighborhood schools. The traditional approach, the closest school to your home.

• Schools that run a traditional calendar (summers off), schools that run a year-round calendar.

For a free booklet on enrollment options and what's offered at the schools, visit a school or call (619) 725-5672 or write, Enrollment Options Office, Annex 7B, 4100 Normal St., San Diego, 92103. Or visit the district's web site, which contains a good deal of information about enrollment procedures and school policies. www.sandi.net

Try to get the school information quickly. Some programs accept students only within specified dates. Some schools and programs may be crowded and limited in how many students they can accept.

Although big, the San Diego district does not serve every neighborhood in that city. Other districts educating San Diego children include Poway, Del Mar, Solana Beach, San Dieguito, Sweetwater, San Ysidro and South Bay Elementary. In some situations, children on one street attend district A and children from the next street over attend district B. Always check and if you want a transfer, file it quickly.

Over the past seven years, the district seen enrollments drop by over 8,000 students. Some schools are losing students, some gaining. To even out enrollments, the district sometimes changes attendance boundaries.

Despite the enrollment decline, the San Diego district has been opening schools and some people contend that the district wants to avoid the arguments that inevitably come with closings.

In 1998, voters approved a $1.5 billion bond that is being used to build 12 schools and renovate and modernize almost every school in the district. Some of this work is still being done.

If renting or buying, it pays to be attentive to school scores and if you are a parent this knowledge may help with your child's education. www.mccormacks.com

School scores, countless studies have shown, correlate closely to family and neighborhood income. High income … high scores, middle … middling scores, low … low scores.

This correlation frequently gets mangled to mean that the rich buy their children a good education and that if you don't have money, your children may receive an inferior education. www.mccormacks.com

Money certainly helps. It purchases books, tutors, trips to Renaissance cities, SAT prepping and more. Good old money!

But if you don't have money or if you have little, you can still secure your children a good education. As a first step, you should understand the scores and what they imply. www.mccormacks.com

Even if you don't have children, the scores can help. You want to buy a condo close to your job in a safe neighborhood. Take a look at the rankings of the schools. A school that scores low may indicate that the neighborhood has many dropouts who may be tempted into mischief. You might skip this neighborhood or look within it for a complex that has gates and guards.

Attendance Zones

Almost all schools have clearly delineated attendance zones. The exceptions, which we will mention later, are important. www.mccormacks.com

For most people, the local school, through its children, contains a representative sample of the residents. The scores, in a rough way, suggest the social composition and educational energy of the neighborhood.

School Profiles

Here are scores from California high schools that represent the makeup at public schools in general. www.mccormacks.com

School A. Located in an upper-middle to rich town. Overall scores in the 95^th percentile, the top 5 percent in the state. Math SAT, low 600s. Statewide, only about 35 schools annually break the 600 math mark. Note that 4 percent of the school is scoring below the 25^th percentile, and 10 percent between the 25^th and 50^th percentile. Nature bestows its gifts randomly. Academic or rich parents don't always produce academic children.

School B. Located in a middle to upper-middle town. Scores in the 70^th and 80^th percentile, top 25 percent of state. Math SAT, 540s. www.mccormacks.com

 

School C. Middle income, scores about 50^th- percentile. Math SAT 520s. About 28 percent of the students are scoring above the 75^th percentile.

 

School D. Low middle, scores about the 30^th percentile. Math SAT about 500 to 510. About 13 percent of the school is scoring above the 75^th percentile. www.mccormacks.com

 

School E. Low scoring, scores in the 10^th to 20^th percentile. Math SAT 370s-400s. About 4 percent above the 75^th percentile.

 

As the charts show, every school has students scoring across the spectrum. The difference is the proportion. The high scoring … many students placing in the top percentiles, the low … few. The rest in between. www.mccormacks.com

These differences correspond to college attendance. As one rough measure, admission rates to the University of California, which takes the top 12-13 percent of high-school grads in the state.

The affluent high school will advance 20 to 30 percent of its seniors to a UC. www.mccormacks.com

The middle and upper middle, 7 to 12 percent, the low, about 5 percent, the lowest, 3 percent.

All schools will graduate students into California State Universities, which accept the top third of state students, and to community colleges. The top schools will send many students to private universities, the others, a few. www.mccormacks.com

See detailed local scores in School Scores and How Public Schools Work.

School Rhetoric

If you ask any school administrator, can your school give my child a good education, the answer, no matter what the scores of the school, will almost invariably be yes. www.mccormacks.com

First, the administrator would invite professional suicide if he or she slammed the school.

Second, as the scores and college placements show, even the lowest-scoring schools can turn out top students.

Almost any school can claim, legitimately, that its teachers and programs can meet the needs of almost all students, no matter what the school scores. But there are major differences between the schools. www.mccormacks.com

The Money Correlation

In the U.S, if you are rich or well-to-do, you are usually well educated. To rise in business or government, to secure the better jobs in our modern, complex society, you pretty much have to have a bachelor's degree or higher. Income and education go hand in hand.

Turning to housing, what you can afford depends on your income, which correlates to your education. www.mccormacks.com

For this reason, affluent towns and neighborhoods generally have many highly educated residents, who often have disposable income that can be used to pay for tutors, SAT cramming, etc.

These people also have good educational values and high expectations for their children and the local schools.

A few middle-class towns score very high because they have strong academic values. These towns include Albany and Davis, which are located near Universities of California. University towns and high-tech towns (many knowledge workers) often score high. www.mccormacks.com

So do towns with certain minority groups with sound educational values. When these groups prosper, they often move up market.

School Ready-Homework

At the most basic level, parents in these communities spend the time, effort and the money to prepare their children for school. www.mccormacks.com

The kids show up at kindergarten or the first grade knowing the alphabet and in many instances how to read simple sentences. Not all of them. There are always slow learners.

The teacher spends a certain amount of time with the struggling students but has ample time to work with the faster ones. www.mccormacks.com

When it comes to homework, these parents — with exceptions — make sure it gets done.

The result: the school can teach at a fast pace. In the higher grades, the school can offer science and math earlier and more college prep and advanced placement classes.

Volunteering, Parent Activism

At high-scoring schools, many parents closely follow their children's progress. They show up at school events and teacher conferences, contribute money when asked, and if there are problems, try to address them, sometimes by tutoring. www.mccormacks.com

Other parents are much more involved. They volunteer in the classrooms and as chaperones on school outings, they stay in close contact with the teachers, they suggest changes in programs and curriculum, they complain.

The overall level of activity is very high. www.mccormacks.com

Money

Many low- and middling schools receive more public money per student than the high-scoring schools. The upper-income schools often try for a parcel tax, which is hard to win because it requires two-thirds approval of the voters. Many affluent districts in Northern California have passed this tax; very few in Southern Cal, which in its bones is conservative about taxes.

Many schools and school districts have parent or community clubs that raise money. For middle-income districts, the goal might be $100,000 to $200,000. www.mccormacks.com

Clubs in affluent districts annually raise over $500,000 and occasionally, if elective classes are threatened, over a $1 million.

Some of these clubs ask school parents to volunteer a certain contribution per child, usually hundreds of dollars — in effect a child tax. www.mccormacks.com

Government funding comes with strings and commitments, such as staff and teacher salaries.

The parent or community clubs are private entities and can distribute their dollars as they see fit. Knowing the schools intimately — the volunteers in the classrooms — they may fund in ways that are very effective. www.mccormacks.com

The Intangibles

The really high-scoring schools have many clubs and extra-curricular activities. Some schools manage to work Latin and Mandarin into their curriculums.

When the children post their essays on the bulletin board, they reveal that their fathers and mothers are lawyers, computer specialists, professors and business professionals. These parents will occasionally show up to talk about their jobs. All this may rub off on the kids. www.mccormacks.com

At recess and after school, the kids hang around with kids who read books and maybe have some polished social skills. These days etiquette classes are showing up in the affluent towns.

Many students will be trying for the toughest universities: the University of California, Stanford, University of Southern Cal, Yale, Harvard, the Ivy Leagues. This shooting-for-the-top intensifies the academic program. www.mccormacks.com

What's Not To Like

High-scoring schools often are not diverse — many whites and Asians and few from other groups, almost no poor.

These schools are not against diversity. But as their attendance zones are not diverse, they cannot be diverse.

Some parents think that these schools are too intense. If your child is a low or mid achiever, he or she might feel ill-at-ease in these schools. www.mccormacks.com

But in the large picture, these public schools in many ways are excellent institutions.