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 95th 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 25th percentile, and 10 percent between the 25th and 50th 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 70th and 80th percentile, top 25 percent of state. Math SAT, 540s. www.mccormacks.com
School C. Middle income, scores about 50th- percentile. Math SAT 520s. About 28 percent of the students are scoring above the 75th percentile.
School D. Low middle, scores about the 30th percentile. Math SAT about 500 to 510. About 13 percent of the school is scoring above the 75th percentile. www.mccormacks.com
School E. Low scoring, scores in the 10th to 20th percentile. Math SAT 370s-400s. About 4 percent above the 75th 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.
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.
