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[quote=Anonymous]Used to live in the Bay Area.  It's true a lot of people move out of SF when they have kids for various reasons including schools and cost of housing.  That being said, there are people who raise their kids in SF and many of them are very educated and concerned about their kids education.  In SF proper what people do is either private K-8 or lottery into a school they find acceptable.  There seems to be a bit of a game with the lottery where choosing the most popular (often most white/highest test score) schools is extremely hard to get into, but if you do your homework and find less popular schools, it is more likely to get into your school of choice.  Still, some people still find themselves in schools that are highly inconvenient commute wise, etc.  Then for high school, I have seen a mixture of Lowell or Ruth Asawa (didn't that used to be SOTA?) if a student is really talented in the arts, private high schools, and a few open enrollment high schools (such as Washington, Lincoln, Galileo).  One of the families I know who sent one of their kids to Washington is a famous scientist married to a doctor who had his kids in private K-8 and sent one other kid to Lowell and another to private high school, so YMMW with regard to fit, etc.  I just wanted to throw that out there, because it doesn't seem that for ALL kids, none of the non-Lowell public high schools are an option.  All of this navigation seems like a total headache to me, but people do it.  I remember when I was younger I had a family friend who lived in SF and her high school application process coming out of SF Day school sounded more akin to applying to college than high school, but I think that's living in cities in general and why many families want to avoid it.  I hear similar tales from families in Chicago and NYC, at least.

Outside of the city, the suburbs with the best scoring schools tend to be pressure cookers with obscenely expensive housing.  Obviously there are towns with excellent schools nearer Sillicon Valley like Palo Alto, Melo Park, Cupertino, Fremont, etc.  There are a few areas of San Jose that have good schools.  I  mostly lived in the East Bay so I'm less familiar with those towns schools, but I have friends from college (I went to college on the West Coast) who went to all those schools.

I have also seen plenty of educated families (especially Cal faculty) who were happy with Berkeley public schools, Albany public schools, and even some select Oakland schools (mostly just Oakland Tech for high school, various neighborhood elementary schools). Alameda as well.  El Cerrito has stronger elementary schools than the high schools and West Contra County schools are a bit of a mess, but still some people seem happy there.  Marin has good schools, so does Lamorinda and Walnut Creek.  Further out in the East Bay as you get into Danville/Pleasanton/Alamo/Livermore the schools perform well as well.

Just as you see in DC, people's attitudes vary on what they are looking for as far as "good" public schools go.  I don't think a kid from an educated family attending Berkeley High is going to be at any disadvantage and there are so many specialized programs and opportunities there for a motivated student.  My postdoc advisor from UC Berkeley's son certainly seems to be perfectly adequately prepared for an east coast private college coming out of Berkeley High.  On the other hand, a family friend thinks the Berkeley public schools are not good enough sends his kids to Head-Royce a fancy private in Oakland, so again people's attitudes differ.

The schools in CA are pretty underfunded due to prop 13 (and the only other way to raise money is parcel tax) which causes all kinds of issues and need for PTA funding, etc. You can't exactly have exclusive towns with high property tax to fund the schools like on the East Coast and parts of the Midwest.  But I don't think this is because parents don't care about schools.  I think there is some of the progressive focus on equity/diversity and looking beyond the great schools scores and more at the whole picture (especially in the inner East Bay and SF) where educated parents who are dedicated to the public schools embrace that element a little more than parts of the East Coast.  I also think that some of the STEM partnerships with companies/national laboratories/universities are better/more extensive than in other parts of the country and that can be a really huge benefit for some kids.  Maybe the bigger issue is for kids who slip through the cracks with LDs who need IEPs and such with the funding issues--but that's a tricky issue because I've seen that be problematic even in very good, well funded/well regarded public school systems[/quote]

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