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Location Affects Education
Sacramento Union Op-Ed
By: Vicki E. Murray, Ph.D
10.12.2007
Sacramento Union, October 12, 2007
SACRAMENTO – Money Magazine recently released its annual list of best places to live. The 2007 version focuses on smaller cities and towns with a strong sense of community and, of course, good public schools. Several California clues that made the top–100 list also have schools that fail to justify Money Magazine's "A" for education grades.
In fact, across California there are hundreds of affluent, under performing public schools. At more than one in 10 affluent California public elementary and secondary schools–including dozens of California Distinguished School+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.
There are hundreds more California high schools where slightly more than half of students score at grade level–proficiency on the CST in English and math but are not deemed college–ready on the Early Assessment Program (EAP). In no case did CST proficiency rates come close to EAP standards, and in some cases the proficiency gaps were as large as 40 percentile points.
All of these schools enroll one–third or fewer low–income and one–third or fewer economically disadvantaged students. Many of them are located in areas with median home prices approaching, and even exceeding, $1 million. Take Money Magazine's fifth–best city of Claremont. The median home price of $700,000 buys access to schools like Claremont High. 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 EAP.
This is a school where fewer than one in five students is low-income or economically disadvantaged, only three percent are English language learners, and just 12 percent of students district-wide are classified with a learning disability. So apologists can't use poverty, disabilities, or language as an excuse.
Granite Bay, where the median home price is $880,000, also makes Money Magazine's top–100 list. At California Distinguished School Granite Bay High, 66 percent of juniors 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 (0.2 percent), only one percent of its students is economically disadvantaged, and nine percent of students district–wide are classified with a learning disability.
Other Money Magazine best California places to live include cities like Clayton, Coronado, El Dorado, and Moorpark, where median home prices start at more than $500,000 and go as high as $1.5 million. Yet at many of their public schools a majority of students in multiple grades are scoring below proficiency in English and math. These schools enroll few students who are poor, have learning disabilities, or are English language learners.
Parents across the state can survey other schools in the Pacific Research Institute's new book "Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice." The lesson of that book, as the above cases show, is that location is no guarantee of quality education, so why At California Distinguished School Granite Bay High. 66 percent of juniors score proficient in English on the state standards test, but only 28 percent were deemed college-ready. should students be assigned to district schools based on where they live? All California parents should have the same freedom to send their children to any public, or private, school they choose regardless of where they live.
The proportion of California elected officials who send their own children to private schools far exceeds that of the general public who elected them. Those officials could help all Californians make a similar choice by ending the monopoly system of assigned schooling and putting parents in charge of their children's education dollars.
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