What is the best school district in Southern California

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Your question is difficult to answer because it is not specific. How do you judge school district quality? Top scores on standardized tests? Parental involvement? Most student satisfaction? Best placement of students into top tier colleges? Also, do you mean public schools, private, religious, or all three?





IMO, for the qualities I've mentioned, among public high schools in Southern California, Gretchen Whitney (in Cerritos, of course) is the top school.





A great site I'm sure others will also mention if you want to research K-12 education, is www.greatschools.net. Enjoy!
 
mater dei is the powerhouse around here. the basketball program is known nationally. villa park hasnt been to shabby the past 10 yrs.
 
<p>I played high school basketball for a few years at Uni (definitely not a powerhouse) :)</p>

<p>1. Mater Dei: best in the area, sponsored by Nike. Shea Cotton, a Mater Dei legend, was a 6'3" 200lb freshman and was dunking since 7th grade (or something), this was probably 93-94.</p>

<p>2. Santa Margarita: pretty good program, sponsored by Reebok. Carson Palmer played basketball there as well as football.</p>

<p>3. Aliso Niguel High was pretty good the last few years</p>

<p>4. Huntington Beach High had a few good years back then. Tony Gonzalez played there and went on to bigger better thing.</p>

<p>Anyways, Irvine World News (now Register) used to hold a annual tournmant at Uni High and invite the top teams in the area to play. Long Beach Poly consistently wins those tournaments, and Dominguez High came into town on year and literally beat everyone by 40. </p>
 
ahhh shea cotton... i remember him. still considered possibly the best pure athlete and ballplayer at his age back then. he was a national star in basketball circles even before he entered high school. he could dunk on anybody, anytime. stories of a teenage cotton playing against older college and even nba players are now almost urban legends. schooled a 4-yr older stephon marbury, dunked on ucla's jelani mccoy and kevin garnett as a middle schooler, which the latter claims is his most embarrassing moment ever on a basketball court. rumors were he once divided by zero and beat chuck norris in hand to hand combat.





signed with ucla and would have played with follow incoming freshman earl watson and baron davis. it was supposed to be the best recruiting class in the history of college basketball. unfortunately he couldnt get the qualifying score on his SATs despite given the special circumstances version -- untimed, larger font version designed for those with learning disabilities. he finally scored a 900 on his last attempt, but hadn't filed the proper paperwork to get permission to take the special circumstances test so the NCAA declared the score invalid and he lost his eligibility.





ended up playing in JC and faded away. his name pops up from time to time at an nba camp trying to make a roster but so far no go... these days he would have just made the leap to the nba and probably been a top 5 pick. maybe he would have still fizzled out but he'd be set for life. what a story...
 
<p>acpme, good memory... Did you know Chuck Norris legally changed his left leg and right leg to be Law and Order.</p>

<p>There were 2 other guys on the Mater Dei squad around that time. Miles Simon, who was the shooting guard for Arizona during their run in 1997 was a Mater Dei guy. Also, Kevin Augustine, who scored and dunked at will against a helpless Uni JV team, as an incoming freshman point guard.</p>

<p>IMO, Long Beach Poly & Dominguez High pretty much owned everyone (outside of Mater Dei) in the tournaments. Woodbridge High had a 7 footer named Chris Burgess (all American and went to Duke), and put up a good fight for a few years, but even then, they got ran silly by Dominguez. They had this lanky lefty forward by the name of Tayshaun Prince, who was draining 3's and dunking at will by then.</p>

<p>Most OC schools really aren't known for the athletics, and while most schools were doing lay up drills pre-game, these guys were all doing dunk drills.</p>

<p>Anyways, CIF is pretty competitive, and Orange County does have some good teams that qualifies as power houses. Now, if you get major sponsorship and do out of district recruiting *cough* Mater Dei *cough*. Then you definitely get some advantages.</p>
 
Shea Cotton was the best high school basketball player I have ever seen. I followed his career (or lack there of) since high school - turned out to be quite a disappointment.
 
97 was my senior year... the div II southern section championship was woodbridge vs villa park, pitting oc's two great ivory towers -- chris burgess and eric chenowith. both were considered among the top graduating prep players that year, with burgess widely considered the #1 prep player in the country overall. i was at that game and remember the atmosphere was amazing since it was at the pond and both were local teams. vp was on an amazing cif run, having upset compton (not dominguez) in the previous game. woodbridge was the heavy favorite but vp jumped to 10 pt half-time lead as burgess struggled. chenowith had a HUGE game but burgess and woodbridge pulled off a comeback win. at the end of the game, it looked like the two 7 footers were destined to become the next great white hypes of hoops, with burgess went to duke and chenowith to kansas.





ultimately they both fizzled out quickly in college. burgess went on missions -- a nice way to play down getting benched by coach k -- then transferred to utah. chenowith had a decent freshman yr then got benched and booed regularly by his own fans in later years. neither were able to stay on an nba roster, let alone make any impact in the pros. thats amazing to me since there are and have been some pretty awful slugs on nba rosters over the yrs that kept a job for no other reason than they were tall and had a pulse. but two 7 footers that played under coach k and roy williams cant find even a bench spot on a roster? wow, they must be REALLY bad. two more woulda-coulda-shouldas...





thanks for making me revive high school memories!
 
<p>nice visit down memory lane :)</p>

<p>Anyways, my high school teammate Ryan is coaching boys varsity bball at CDM. He experienced Burgess first hand. I heard he's doing some good things over there too with the kids. Anyways, Eva, I think you got enough background from those of us boys who went through high school in the 90s.</p>
 
<p>I guess I will join in on the hijacking of this thread:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.usbasket.com/player.asp?Cntry=USA&PlayerID=32542&AmNotSure=1">www.usbasket.com/player.asp</a></p>

<p>Back to the original question, obvious Irvine has a tremendous reputation for its school but as previously pointed out in another thread, Uni was the only in the 60s in the "Top 100" high school ranking. Schools like Whitney (Cerritos) outperformed Uni. Additionally, I think a lot of wealthy people put their kids in private schools or home school them.</p>
 
i guess i never know firsthand until i have teenage children but parents, esp in irvine, really get far too caught up in rankings. any one of the top 200~300 schools in the nation is fantastic. i've heard people cite reasons for their child not getting into the school of their (their = parents') choice... if only they lived in turtle rock as opposed to woodbridge, because uni high has AP bio-hydroelectrical baking level III and woodbridge or irvine high do not. wah wah wah.
 
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