There are some really great public schools if you can afford to live near them, but that's certainly not true on net. Otherwise California wouldn't consistently rank among the bottom half of US states for public schooling.

It's really not the school that determines outcomes but the home life. You have a lot of kids in LAUSD who have no real role models at all in their lives and come home to terrible situations every day, which makes the school district look bad but its not really something the school district has any power to solve short of offering boarding school for at risk kids.

The Chetty study says it's not just the home life, it's the whole neighborhood. And whether the majority of families in the area are single-parent homes or not.

Source: Sandi Metz 2019 RubyConf "Lucky You"

but also: https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-family-geography-of-the-ameri...

The schools are not nearly as good as they should be for the income in the areas they're in. You would think that in an area where the average home is over $1 million every school would be a 10/10, but it's far from that.

Bay area public schools are horrible. I live 15 mins away from Apple HQ and all you need to know about our assigned elementary school is that it has metal detectors on the entrance because of the gang activity.

That has nothing to do with the schooling and everything to do with the homelife these impovershed students experience after the bell rings. If you are a good role model to your children they will do fine in public school and not join gangs or drop out like those whose only role model is their cousin who got out of prison and is trying to recruit them into a gang.

will you send your kid to a school like that?

Of course. Public schools these days have excellent programs especially if you are into tech, engineering, or pre health.

If we are judging by one completely objective measure (high school graduation rates) California is currently the lowest-ranked state in the country: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/high-school...

By that website, the lowest ranked state is California (83% graduation rate), the second lowest ranked state is...Texas (84% graduation rate). So...California is slightly worse than Texas on schooling?

I wonder if something else is going on for California and Texas to rank behind Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana? I'd bet that the issue with the standard of measure, not the actual quality of education.

I disagree with that metric, because many students should not finish high school — I think the graduation rate is too high in every state. I would compare states based on testing performance, keeping in mind California’s demographics and the absurdly high number of kids who don’t speak English at home.

I should say I think its schools are fine, rather than great.

if you can afford living close to one or pay for private schooling

Hell, in SF that first bit doesn't even help, due to the broken lottery system here. It's probably the main reason why there are so few children (by percent) in SF when compared to other cities. Parents make the logical decision to move out of SF when their kids become school-age because they have near-zero control over the school their kids end up at. Alternatively, they put their kids in private school, which is out of reach cost-wise for many families.

Yeah, and median house price next to the great schools is 2mil. Or it is fairly far from big tech hubs.

As long as you consider changing the school name to be a great use of effort.