What area are you calling South Bay? We are in South San Jose which is usually included in South Bay. This area there are charter schools that are either chartered by the school district or the county. They names of the programs/charters do not necessarily appear on Great Schools. You might try looking at the school district sites. The Charters are usually entered by lottery with the first round going to school district residents and have a participation requirement. The Charter schools do have some advantages even if they aren't perfect matches intellectually. Such as our District has a GATE program and about 30% of the class has qualified.
The school that DS goes to also has a ranking of 6 on great schools and does not have grades or tests, but portfolio work. The first test that DS took was in 2nd grade, the NCLB standardized test. The principles of the school are differentiation in class and project based work. The PTA and fundraising support an art and music program, we do field trips and depending on the teacher science is a lot of fun. This year, 3rd grade the kids did a squid dissection.
In some ways the lack of testing actually worked against my son as the teachers did not get DS. Grouping in the class was determined by the childs oral exam of written material within a 15 minute period. So in first grade even though he was reading Wayside school stories at home he was in the lowest reading group at school. And it wasn't until the standardized test results came back that they were willing to listen to us.
Just an FYI, but the school district just north of us has a number of schools that rank 10s on Great Schools though the area just north of us is a very rich area and overall the very large school district has a lot of troubled schools.
Thanks. Yes, this helps a lot. I did start looking at charter schools but it seems that enrollment is over for the school year 2013-2014. I think I did call one of the charter schools in san jose, and this was the response I received. I also have to be honest -- I did not call every single charter school in San Jose (I called about three to four schools, and everyone was super nice on the phone, and told me to apply next year). I also apologize - I did not know that California had more than one south bay. I was referring to the south bay in the city of San Francisco. Sounds like I have a lot of reading/talking/exploring to do, considering I am pretty clueless about the area.
Rocky, I have also been looking at schools at the other town you mentioned. I know it is a super rich area, but I would appreciate some feedback on how the schools really are. The phrase "troubled schools" worries me. I am looking at some of the schools in that area, even though going to that town would probably be detrimental financially.
If you would like to PM me, instead of writing to this thread, that is okay as well.
I have been reading everyone's responses and they are all very helpful.
