What are the BEST school districts in Southern California? (Irvine: ranking, teachers)

[hsw]

Would look at concentration of National Merit Finalists....and ratio of kids who enter Stanford/Harvard/Wharton/Princeton....

LA is a difficult region (vs SiliconValley/NYC/Chic), as many affluent parents aren't education-oriented....

And at true upper economic echelons, parents can easily donate to college of choice to solve the silly admissions game....

As Stanford/Harvard realize, many of their most successful "products" are dropouts (esp PhD CompSci in case of Stanford), not actual grads.....similarly, many HS grads eventually generate much career success, despite, not b/c of, their allegedly superior HS/college "education"....

[Gnator]

...ed consultant... I like Aspire Schools and Green Dot Schools. Malibu and Redondo Beach are also great districts. not sure what grade you teach but, Alhambra High was ranked #1 for California in U.S. News and World Reports.

[VillageLife]

Arcadia,San Marino in the San Gabriel Valley

[impala666]

Originally Posted by Aveda Institute

I am an ex teacher. The best districts are Whittier, Pomona, Santa Monica Malibu.

ONE WORD MALIBU!
I have to move south and this is is where my kids will be!!

[HumanRightsAdvocate]

I would like to reply to the point that Whittier is one of the best districts. It depends on which Whittier district you mean because there are at least five districts there. If you mean East Whittier and Whittier City, then I agree that those are great. However, SOUTH WHITTIER is the absolute worst district.

[basketballakev]

The ABC Unified School District in Cerritos is a very good school district. Whitney High School is one of the best schools in the nation.

[nmnita]

Interesting thread, but does anyone realize it is a year old plus. Actually 2 years from the OP..

Nita

[bhcompy]

ABC varies basketballakev. Essentially, only the schools directly located in Cerritos are considered great, the rest vary from good(say, Kennedy Elementary in Artesia) to terrible(Hawaiian Elementary in Hawaiian Gardens).

Lakewood has been attempting for years and years to pool the Lakewood city schools into a Lakewood City School District because of the poor performance tied to some of the ABC schools in east Lakewood and Paramount District schools in west Lakewood. Bellflower and Long Beach districts have performed fairly well, though probably not as good as they could if the city had all its resources pooled together rather than being part of 4 separate districts.

[basketballakev]

Originally Posted by bhcompy

ABC varies basketballakev. Essentially, only the schools directly located in Cerritos are considered great, the rest vary from good(say, Kennedy Elementary in Artesia) to terrible(Hawaiian Elementary in Hawaiian Gardens).

Lakewood has been attempting for years and years to pool the Lakewood city schools into a Lakewood City School District because of the poor performance tied to some of the ABC schools in east Lakewood and Paramount District schools in west Lakewood. Bellflower and Long Beach districts have performed fairly well, though probably not as good as they could if the city had all its resources pooled together rather than being part of 4 separate districts.

Eh, I dont know too much about how their elementary schools are but their high schools are definitely good with Gahr, Cerritos, Whitney and Artesia. How come Lakewood has been unable to pool the Lakewood city schools into one Lakewood Unified School District?

[bhcompy]

The state hasn't been very helpful at all for Lakewood, but ultimately it's up to the voters in all of the districts involved to approve it according to what I remember, and I don't recall if it made it to the ballot or not.

And Artesia is a decent school, but I've never heard it called good. Gahr has improved lately. Whitney is great if you can get in, handle the curriculum, and you don't want to play traditional sports, kind of like Oxford in Cypress.