Washington D.C. Examiner, October 11, 2007

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - School is back in session, and many California families in upscale suburbs may soon get a lesson in the high cost of “free” public schools. The Golden State is a national leader in high housing costs and foreclosure rates.

No matter which state they live in, however, what drives many families to stretch their budgets to the breaking point is desperation to get their children into decent schools. That is why a family buys a school system at the same time it buys a house.

But just how good are those schools? As a new book by the Pacific Research Institute puts it: “Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice,” by Lance Izumi, Rachel Chaney and myself.

Because it is the nation’s largest — and in many respects its bellweather — state, our focus is on California. Many California parents and their elected officials will be shocked to learn that there are hundreds of affluent, underperforming public schools statewide.

In fact, at more than one in 10 affluent California public schools — including dozens of so-called California Distinguished Schools — a majority of students in at least one grade score below grade-level proficiency in English or math on the California Standards Test (CST), the state’s main standardized exam.

These are schools that enroll one-third or fewer low-income and one-third or fewer economically disadvantaged students. Many of them are also located in areas with median home prices approaching, and even exceeding, $1 million.

Schools such as Saratoga’s Prospect High School in Silicon Valley, one of the country’s most expensive zip codes according to Forbes Magazine, where the median home price is $1.6 million.

At Prospect High, more than half of its 10th and 11th graders in 2006 were not proficient in English, even though only eight percent of its students are English language learners. Less than a quarter of students are proficient in algebra I, not even two out of five are proficient in algebra II, and barely one in 10 is proficient in geometry on the CST.

Several California cities that made Money Magazine’s top-100 list of best places to live also have schools that don’t justify their A for education grades. Buyers should beware in the country’s fifth-best city of Claremont near Los Angeles.

The median home price of $700,000 buys them access to schools like Claremont High, where fewer than one in five students are economically disadvantaged, and only three percent are English language learners.

There, slightly more than half (56 percent) of juniors score proficient in English on the CST, but only 28 percent were deemed college-ready in that subject on the state university’s Early Assessment Program (EAP).

Up north in Granite Bay near Sacramento, another Money Magazine top-100 place to live, 66 percent of juniors at Granite Bay High score proficient in English on the state standards test, but only 28 percent were deemed college-ready.

This is a stunning gap, especially since Granite Bay enrolls virtually no English language learners, only one percent of its students is socio-economically disadvantaged, and the median home price is $880,000.

Hundreds more affluent California schools made it into PRI’s new book, even if their cities did not make Money Magazine’s list. One such city is Torrance. This beach community near Los Angeles is home to some the most famous high schools in America. Torrance High was the setting of Beverly Hills 90210 and South High, the location of the 1999 film American Beauty.

But when slightly more than half of those high-school students score proficient in English, and less than a third test college-ready, the fancy facades aren’t much consolation to parents paying mortgages on $700,000 homes.

For too long, families in California and across the country have been led to believe that poor-quality schools are an inner-city problem best solved by moving to the suburbs where the “good” public schools are.

Given the current housing market, middle-income families may now find themselves trapped in homes they can barely afford to keep and cannot afford to sell at a loss — all for schools that fail to deliver.

There is a remedy. Legislators should end the current monopoly system of assigned schooling and put parents in charge of their children’s education dollars. That would expand their educational opportunities without putting them in the poorhouse.

Dr. Vicki E. Murray is Education Studies Senior Policy Fellow at the Pacific Research Institute.