I'd talk to neighbors with kids in school, or with people who work there, graduates, go to public forums, etc. You may be entirely correct about Berkeley public schools, it would fit all my stereotypes of the area. And I'm sure Asian international schools are very good. But the point of articles like this is to dig up the worst examples one can find, and so extrapolating from this overview of worst-case debate club stories to everything about your education environment is not a good methodology.