<p>No one here has yet mentioned the importance of strong special education programs. All of the AP courses in the world won’t do your kid a bit of good, if it turns out that your kid has a learning disability that the school won’t provide appropriate support for.</p>
<p>Happkid took longer than average to learn to read. She also has struggled with math since day one. She is charming, smart, hardworking, and gifted in other areas. If there had not been observant elementary school teachers, and a dragon-lady elementary school principal to land hard on top of the less observant elementary school teachers, Happykid might never have received the LD services that proved critical to her mastering reading skills before she got to middle school. If there had not been an excellent Resource Teacher at that middle school, Happykid might still be moseying through life without the organizational skills that proved critical for survival in high school. While I could complain about what happened when she graduated from Resources in 8th grade and the school system dropped the ball on teaching her math, I can’t complain about Happykid’s self-advocacy skills or her sense of competence. Yes math will always be a struggle for her, but she will never have one bit of trouble in getting someone else to handle that aspect of her life for her.</p>
<p>Until your kid is in school, it is entirely possible that you will have no way to know if there will be a need for Special Education services. However, if there is a need, those services will be absolutely critical.</p>
<p>The trouble is, some kids will rise to the top regardless of a very challenging home or school environment and some may even rise because of it. But some will feel the effects of a poor academic and social fit for years to come. It’s a gamble many parents who are fortunate enough to have the choice to make are not willing to take. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t have any good choice.</p>
<p>When we moved to the city our daughter was almost two. Neither one of us knew anything about the school district- my H had been raised in the city ( I, in Kirkland), but we moved within walking distance to an elementary school & the high school.</p>
<p>Both our kids are twice gifted, bright with learning challenges. My oldest attended private schools K-12, which we were able to afford with financial aid & because we lived in an affordable neighborhood. Youngest started out in private, but then moved to a public alternative school for upper elementary & middle school, then to the " inner city" public for high school. ( which incidentally from which many graduates attend Ivies and comparable every year).
Seattle is a diverse district, about as diverse as the district you live in, although Seattle is much bigger, which may account for having an on time graduation rate of 70.1% while your district according to [url=<a href=“http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/summary.aspx?groupLevel=District&schoolId=1&reportLevel=State&orgLinkId=106&yrs=&year=2009-10]OSPI[/url”>http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/summary.aspx?groupLevel=District&schoolId=1&reportLevel=State&orgLinkId=106&yrs=&year=2009-10]OSPI[/url</a>] has 81.1% and Seattle puts 67% of their budget into teacher salaries as compared to your district which spends 72%.</p>
<p>Personally I would rather live in a smaller district- but I am happy we didn’t choose to stay in the suburbs, not to mention it has been very important to be able to keep an affordable standard of living and not live in an expensive area just because we perceived the schools to be better.</p>
<p>When we moved to where we live now, we didn’t yet have children. Actually, I got a job as a teacher in the local elementary school when we moved to this area a long time ago. We wanted to move here, but it wasn’t for the schools and we didn’t look into the schools at the time. We eventually had children, and they went to school here. My feeling is that many on CC would not send their kids to the schools my kids attended. I have to say that our elementary school is superb (ironically, my 24 year old who is home visiting, at this very moment went to visit her grade 1/2/3 teacher at the elementary school for old times’ sake). About 66% of students at our HS go onto college. Our kids did absolutely fine and got a very good education. I’m sure our schools don’t meet the criteria that many on here have for picking a school district. We didn’t pick our district but all was fine anyway. </p>
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<p>Our goal was never for our kids to get into Ivies, but in any case, they got into their top choice colleges and I believe it is the kid who gets into college, not the HS they came from. I believe no matter what high school my kids went to, their admissions outcome would have been the same. And just to refute your statement, even though my kids went to what you likely would consider a crappy HS…D1 got into Ivies and went to Brown, then grad school at MIT (got into other Ivies) and next grad school at Berkeley (a top program in her field, also got into Stanford). D2 got into top programs in her field of musical theater and went to NYU/Tisch. While our high school doesn’t send a lot of kids to tippy top colleges, there are always top students who do get into such schools. I know a kid in this year’s graduating class who is going to MIT.</p>
<p>I just looked up our HS and 20% are eligible for free or reduced lunch. I obviously never cared to know that statistic before!</p>
<p>And before one claims that my kids were not well prepared for their competitive colleges…they achieved excellent grades in college and both won top awards at their respective colleges as well.</p>
<p>Just for education and the kids’ experiences I would think its important to go to a decent school district, and for us it would be most important that they have curricular offerings (language selection, music, selection of advanced classes). You don’t want something that will be bleak, depressing, or a bad influence. </p>
<p>BUT I would also go out of my way to avoid most of the top of the line uber enriched suburban districts. Among the people I know who moved to a couple of the best school districts, and the areas with the “best” schools in those districts, this move has backfired. Regular kids in those schools find a huge amount of competition making it harder for anyone who is not ultraexceptional to shine. The families I know who did this so their kids could go to better colleges found that in fact, their became burned out earlier and it was harder to get into a good college because everyone in the school was a good student. Coming from an excellent suburban school, especially in certain areas, doesn’t give you a lot of interest value as an applicant. Yes, you probably get a good education, with many curricular options, but the price is often lots of stress and not great development as a person. </p>
<p>My kids went to a decent but diverse urban public school, and we thought it was just right. They certainly had as good a chance as top colleges as they would have from any high school.</p>
<p>Very true. FWIW, my son went K-12 to a very pricey private school. By far the best school in our area and ranked in the top 3 in our state. He got an excellent education. However, the school screens out kids who are below average and has a disproportionate share of super smart, over-achievers. Had he gone to the local public school he would have easily been in the top 5-10% of his class. In this school, he was in the top 25%. I have no regrets because he got a top-notch education and those foundations that are laid out in K-12 are not so easily replicated in college. At our local HS, kids even in the top 10% of the class often can’t manage to pass AP classes or get high SAT scores. But it is something to think about - in upper middle class suburbs, the competition can be a lot tougher. What I saw happen in our school is if several kids applied, the more selective colleges would accept the one that was the top student (or sometimes two) because you are, in fact, competing against your own classmates for those slots.</p>
<p>We moved across country when our S was 2 1/2 years old.</p>
<p>Quality of the school district was the sine qua non of our location decision. (In our case, district = school as we were looking at towns small enough to have 1 hs each and, in some cases, 1 elementary and 1 ms each).</p>
<p>Now, one person’s “quality” is different from another’s. Some people mean a huge % go to elite schools. Some need highest possible quality special education.</p>
<p>For me, a large % of students going on to 4-year institutions is key. Other people look at test scores, sit in on classes… there are so many ways to assess quality.</p>
<p>But I agree with those who - if education is high on your priority list of values - believe that this is a key decision and worth a lot of money. </p>
<p>You sometimes sacrifice socio-economic diversity to get the “better” school, and this is a shame (imo). But you don’t always have to make this trade-off. </p>
<p>If your child has the potential to be strong academically (or you hope s/he does), I think you need to ask yourselves questions like:[ul][<em>]What would it be like to be a “scholar”/high achieving student in this district? Will it engender ridicule? Will my child want to dumb down so as not to be bullied, or because “smart” and “popular” are opposites at this school? [</em>]What is the richness of the curriculum in this high school? Are the offerings going to be adequate for a high-achieving kid - advanced courses in math/sciences/language/literature? If not, can I help my kid achieve this richness some other way?[<em>]Is the school safe? Are the groups who are heavy into drugs/alcohol/dangerious behaviors almost invisible/a minority/predominant?[</em>]What’s it like to pursue non-academic interests at this school - do the jock vs. theatre kids vs. debate geeks vs. mathletes vs. Student Council types intermingle or form warring factions?[/ul] Those are just a few musings about the issue.</p>
<p>It’s harder to pin down, but I think the communities attitude towards education is very important. We chose for our son to attend a Title One high school (40% eligible for free lunch.) The district does not have a lot of money but culturally a very high value is placed on public education. </p>
<p>We had many options but wound up very satisfied with our choice.</p>
<p>as I mentioned earlier we picked a town for the excellent K-12 public education system … and alternative approach is to pay much-much less for a home and use the differential to pay for private schools … living about two miles from our house a family could easily pay only 1/2 as much for just a nice a home in a similar neighborhood but not have the greatest public school.</p>
<p>Hindsight is always 20/20. You get what you pay for. Both my kids did fine in our district and I recommend it for middle class families I know. However I wish we had moved to a more affluent district that would have provided more educational and athletic opportunities. The kids wanted to move while in middle school, but the housing prices were through the roof. Drive by the school on a couple of occasions and see what is coming out and how the kids act. See if parents are there to pick them up. Go to a HS function like a game or a play and see if you can picture your kids there and if you’d be happy. One problem with the more affluent districts, if you’re just getting by to be there, is keeping up with the Joneses. You can always opt for Parochial school, but for me I couldn’t see not sending them where I’m already paying around $5k for school taxes.</p>
<p>I don’t have any kids but you definitely need to keep it in mind when you search. When I bought my house, there were certain school districts I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole… and i don’t even have children. I want to be in a good area for if and when I do, also for if and when I ever decide to sell my house I want someone to actually want it. There were only two school districts I was willing to live in. I went with the one with lower property values. Property taxes were about the same in both (and actually LESS then the property taxes in the school districts I had eliminated). I would say take it all in to consideration and maybe look into the middle area. You don’t want to break yourself going too high, but if you have a middle school district and you have a great kid they can make the most of it and go far. This can happen in the low end too but I have to wonder about the quality of education in that area.</p>
<p>“BUT I would also go out of my way to avoid most of the top of the line uber enriched suburban districts. Among the people I know who moved to a couple of the best school districts, and the areas with the “best” schools in those districts, this move has backfired. Regular kids in those schools find a huge amount of competition making it harder for anyone who is not ultraexceptional to shine” </p>
<p>For the life of me I can’t figure out how to get quotes to show up in the little box like everyone else. Where can I find instructions for this?</p>
<p>I agree with this 100%, we had this experience. We started out in the Cupertino CA district which is one of the best in CA, based on test score and other metrics. We learned after a few years there is nothing particularly exceptional about the district, in terms of the quality of teachers, the facilities or the cirriculum etc. It’s the popluation of families that live in that area that make it so high achieving. They are extremely focused on academic acheivement. And push their kids very hard, too hard in my opinion. My daughter was getting 2hrs of homework pernight in 2nd grade. I talked to the school about it, they agreed it was excessive but said many of the parents were demanding it. My kids were stressed out in grade school over homework!</p>
<p>People in Hong Kong, China, Taiwan know the name Cupertino, and move to the area for it’s “excellent” schools.</p>
<p>Our kids are good students, but not exceptional. In Cupertino, they were made to feel stupid. They weren’t doing 6-7 grade level math in 3rd grade like many of their peers. Their classmates tended to study all weekend, and were rarely seen outside playing. We wanted our kids to have a “normal” childhood without such intense acedemic pressures. I’m talking about grade school here, not high school. Our kids started to believe they were, below average. In 98% of schools they would be above average. If a kid feels she is dumb, or a bad student, it will probably come true.</p>
<p>We ended up moving when older D was is 6th, younger D in 4th. We moved to a very good district, and have never been happier. It’s a much more well rounded district, where test score are not the solitary focus. Sports and teh arts are valued as well. Our kids have been more successful than I think they would have been had we stayed in Cupertino.</p>
<p>“Regular kids in those schools find a huge amount of competition making it harder for anyone who is not ultraexceptional to shine” </p>
<p>I definitely agree with the above statement. In our district you got the attention of you were very smart or on the other end of the spectrum. Good students got lost. I think that the district felt that a good or real good student would do fine on their own rather than making them better.</p>
<p>A good school district is important, especially for families that won’t be considering private education.</p>
<p>If you are dealing with daycare, do make sure that you still have funds left after the mortgage to pay for quality daycare for your kid(s). We had decent incomes but opted not to be “house poor”… that allowed us the financial flexibility base our daycare choices on best fit.</p>
<p>In our neighborhood, the local elementary school and middle school are tops. The high school covers an area of much more economic diversity and would under BOTW’s definition be “bad.” ( 60% minority; 25% of the senior class goes directly into a 4 year college)</p>
<p>But at the high school, there is a cadre of kids who are serious about academics. The AP/IB program is open to all and kids have classes with great teachers and peer support. The GCs and teachers are very supportive of these kids when it comes to college applications.</p>
<p>This school sends kids to super selective colleges every year. And if we didn’t live in our house in this school district, I don’t believe that we’d have had the money to send our kids wherever they wanted to go for college.</p>
<p>Having said that, my younger D told me that when she has kids, she won’t make the choices we did. She’d move to an upper middle class neighborhood and send her kids to those schools. [Good luck, honey…]</p>
<p>ellemenope, while our school didn’t have minorities, it had some similarities to your high school, and like you mention, the kids who were in the highest tracked classes were excellent students, even if the whole student body were not of that type or not college bound. While our high school had a “subset” of the high school that was capable of attending very selective colleges, it mostly differs in that in some competitive high schools, the majority of the student body is like that. But such students exist everywhere, even if the percentages vary. The demanding courses in our high school were plenty challenging. Our kids also accelerated, and had other accommodations as needed to keep them plenty challenged.</p>
<p>Simbot - Yes Cupertino is one of the places I was thinking about, along with Mission San Jose in Fremont, and Palo Alto, which sadly seems to be the teenage suicide capital. I doubt this kind of thing is just in the Bay Area though. Imho, there are more important things than high achievement.</p>