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Old 10-20-2014, 02:39 AM
 
2 posts, read 2,086 times
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We have two little toddlers and are considering purchasing a home in Sunnyvale, MV, Los Altos, or Palo Alto (where-ever we can end up affording) to ensure a decent school district for the kids.

We know that PA, LA and Cupertino have great schools. We decided to omit Cupertino because the few times we visited, we saw entire plazas filled with nothing but tutoring centers. We don't wish that sort of lifestyle on our kids. I also did hear that with some schools in Cupertino, most of the kids had completed some type of summer tutoring, so when school starts in the fall, the teachers simply skip those topics and move onwards. So based on that information (which may be inaccurate, please advise if so), we are shying away from Cupertino.

We personally really love the Los Altos neighborhoods and the schools are rated very well. But that makes me wonder, if LA also has a heavy tutoring and high pressure academic atmosphere as Cupertino? How about Palo Alto? Palo Alto also has great school rankings and I briefly heard mentioned that there are suicides at Gunn High due to the academic pressure? Also, are the teachers at these good school districts better than teachers at lesser school districts, or their rankings are mostly due to parents paying for tutoring?

I, personally, was raised in the Berryessa neighborhood of San Jose, which in my day, had a decent schools (and is still somewhat comparable to Sunnyvale/Mountain View, but too far a commute to work for us now). My husband went to a school district in Los Angeles that was ranked slightly lower than Berryessa. We both didn't go to stellar schools, but went a nice UC and are doing quite well now. We got to enjoy our school years, didn't have insane academic pressure (so we managed to do well, without having to kill ourselves) and enjoyed having a wide range of ethnicity in our schools (caucasians, asians, hispanic, blacks and others) to interact with.

We want to find that fine point of the best schools we can afford to send our kids to, that does not having parents/peers/school admins that pressure children/families to send their kids to tutoring. I'd rather spend that money towards a martial arts class, music lessons, science/space camp, family vacations, cooking classes, whatever.

We'd be happy if our kids can be independent and support themselves as adults, have a balanced mindset, be hardworking and humble (maybe go to a nice UC, of course if they get into an Ivy League that would be nice too). So we probably don't need a stellar school district, but wanted to find a balance of good school, good teachers, and good peers without insane academic pressure/tutoring expectations.
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Old 10-20-2014, 02:16 PM
 
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Hi Jeanisys,

If you are in the PA/LA area, the K-8 schools will have about 50 percent 'White', roughly a quarter Asian (East,South) but hardly any Hispanic students. But once you find yourself in the Mountain View school district, you'll get a classroom made up of at least 50 percent Hispanic. So there is no ideal demographic make up from the K-8 schools in these districts. However, at the High school level, which your kids are still a long way from, you'd appreciate the diversity in the Mountain View-Los Altos School District. But for now, unfortunately, the public elementary schools in the PA and LA areas tend to be homogenous.

I would say about less than 50 percent would have some form of tutoring at the elementary level, but not as intense as you would imagine. Most kids are enrolled in some form of sports or music program outside school rather than academic ones. Language tutoring and Math and writing are popular. Parent communities are strong in PA and LA, providing invaluable support to the schools where outside-of-classroom activities are concerned, which is extremely valuable.
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Old 10-20-2014, 04:30 PM
 
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Everybody is very different, your parenting style and expectations are different, it is all relative. My child attends kindergarten in so called one of the top elementary schools that is known to be very academic and we were warned by a lot of people to avoid its pressure cooker and rote learning culture, lack of diversity, etc. What I discovered was very very mellow environment with very little academics, lots of arts, social education etc. So you have to see for yourself and ideally attend the classrooms during open houses.

Public schooling in CA is barely adequate, so the fact that kids have tutoring reflects that, not that they are pressure cooked into something extraordinary
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Old 10-20-2014, 07:11 PM
 
Location: South Bay
327 posts, read 961,373 times
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I have no first hand experience in this, but I have heard that PA high schools are very intense, and some students really struggle to keep up with the academic expectations and rigor. Maybe someone can substantiate that or dismiss it as urban legend. But at the elementary level, I have to agree that school performance tends to be a function of the percentage of hispanics at each school. You can see the distribution and the relationship to test scoring for this metric. Teachers have to teach for the whole class, so the bottom 50th percentile that can slow down the pace of teaching. Some hispanic students don't even speak english before kindergarten.

I don't know how intense the tutoring is in these districts yet, so I'm interested in this thread, because we too are hoping to buy (or at least rent) in these areas. But I would have to take an WAG that it's really a personal matter that you probably shouldn't worry too much about this at the elementary level. Yes, there will be tiger mom's. All competitive districts have them. But the classroom as a whole will be taught at the gaussian distribution, and the better school districts probably employ a more well rounded education and not just hard sciences and verbal compounded daily. As for the ethnic distributions, I'm definitely attracted to more diversity than less diversity. Some cupertino schools are 95K aggregate Asian/Indian.
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Old 10-21-2014, 12:52 AM
 
2 posts, read 2,086 times
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Thank you all for the advice. It looks like Mountain View, Los Altos and Palo Alto are all decent choices, if I am seeking good schools with good teachers (without a predominantly academic pressure-cooking atmosphere), with Mountain View being more diverse (pros & cons). So it looks like I will still skip Cupertino, considering the lack of diversity there. Finally, I should go to Open Houses to get a better understanding of each individual school.

Thanks! If anyone has anything else to add, it would be greatly appreciated.
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Old 10-21-2014, 02:43 PM
 
2,552 posts, read 2,453,256 times
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Parents create the pressure cooker for their kids. Put kids in a high-ranking school and it is the actions of parents and kids that create that atmosphere. Why is a school high quality? Because the parents are highly educated and deeply involved with their kid's education. It's a chicken-and-egg question.

Even in the SJUSD in okay schools, kids can get wound up tight by the pressure to meet ever more goals, learn ever more things, take ever more tests.

So the only thing that's going to clue you in is meeting the teachers and the other parents.
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Old 10-21-2014, 09:48 PM
 
424 posts, read 549,623 times
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It is the parents, not the school district.

They typical American will say "Junior, follow your heart"

Some parents are more likely to say "Junior; Doctor, Lawyer, Venture Capitalist, not necessarily in that order, Junior, and why are you the second in the class? Why did you score less than him? State schools will not do for your MD/JD/MBA, if you can't get into Stanford, we will exile you to New England to the bowels of Harvard/MIT/Yale and you will have to endure WINTER as a punishment for not being FIRST in the class like we expected."

god only knows what happens to poor Junior if he can only get into Dartmouth or Cornell. perish the thought.
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Old 10-22-2014, 12:28 PM
 
423 posts, read 606,152 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeanisys View Post
Thank you all for the advice. It looks like Mountain View, Los Altos and Palo Alto are all decent choices, if I am seeking good schools with good teachers (without a predominantly academic pressure-cooking atmosphere), with Mountain View being more diverse (pros & cons). So it looks like I will still skip Cupertino, considering the lack of diversity there. Finally, I should go to Open Houses to get a better understanding of each individual school.

Thanks! If anyone has anything else to add, it would be greatly appreciated.
Palo Alto has unified school district. The same school district covers elementary to high school. And all schools from elementary to high schools are basically similar. You don't have to worry about living in particular neighborhood; then find out your neighborhood school is over-capacity and ending up having to attend a lower rated school. As for scores, the only exception is Barron Park Elementary. Barron Park has a trailer park, so there disadvantaged students pulling down the average, but that should impact the your kids' education.

LA school district has good schools. But MV-Whisman school district has a mix of good vs not-so-good schools. Elementary and middle school district and division is by city. Then for high school, you have a different school district, where NW part of both LA and MV goes to LA high school; SE part of both LA and MV goes to MV high school.

Good luck in your home search.
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