by Mitch Lehman
Unlike many educational acknowledgements that arrive with banners, bouquets and bunting, nobody at the San Marino Unified School District knew they had achieved the #1 ranking in the State of California until they were – gasp – informed by a parent.
So says Niche, an independent rating service that evaluates 8,738 districts nationwide to “compare educational outcomes.” The SMUSD was ranked #14 in the nation, according to Niche, based on a formula that evaluates a district’s health and safety (San Marino received an A), academics (A+), student culture and diversity (A), teachers (A+), resources and facilities (B+), extracurricular activities (B-) and sports and fitness (B).
The remainder of the top five in the State of California included Palos Verdes, Palo Alto, Los Gatos – Saratoga and Acalanaes, which is located in Contra Costa.
Locally, Arcadia ranked 12th, La Cañada 27th, South Pasadena 33rd, Temple City 36th and Monrovia 59th. Also of interest, Manhattan Beach at 19th and Beverly Hills, which checked in at #21.
Nationally, the SMUSD checked in at #14 and was the highest-ranked district west of Illinois. Edgemont Union Free School District of Greenburgh Town, New York received the top billing in the United States.
“Our focus is not on rankings, but on providing the most innovative programs, the best trained teachers, and the most cutting edge educational technology,” said Superintendent Dr. Alex Cherniss. “I’ve always said that if we concentrate on this work, the results will take care of themselves. It’s gratifying to see that an independent agency would rank our school district as one of the best in the nation and #1 in California. We in the SMUSD have a commitment to excellence that is unmatched. Our teachers, students and community members have an insatiable drive to be the best. We are proud of our schools and are committed to continuous improvement.”
Cherniss called Niche “ a well-known, legitimate company” which uses “solid criteria” to evaluate districts. When asked, he said the district does not solicit any of the companies which provide evaluation services.
Southwestern Academy was ranked #18 among the nation’s best private high schools, ahead of Flintridge Prep, Pasadena Poly and Westridge, all of which cracked the top seventy.
“Our district has been ranked the number one unified school district in California for the past eleven years under the State’s Academic Performance Index, or API,” said outgoing School Board President Chris Norgaard. “We have learned this year, however, that the State Department of Education in Sacramento will be changing the factors that determine future API rankings. Now we have this new honor, based on very different, broad-based criteria, but the result is the same: We are number one in California. It confirms that regardless of the criteria or how many times someone tries to move the goalposts, we expect to come out on top.”
While taking pride in the honor, Norgaard acknowledged the substantial territorial inequities of public education.
“While we are justly proud of this new recognition as the best school district in California and fourteenth best in the nation, it also shows the challenges we face,” Norgaard continued. “Several leading California districts are close on our heels and the other districts in the top 100 are replete with the usual, nationally known suspects whose state and local governments provide them with substantial funding that we do not receive. When our kids apply to college or compete in the job market, they do not get points to compensate for the funding advantages of our competitors. So we need to keep doing what we have always done – base our excellence on San Marino teachers, students, families and staff, and on San Marino dollars that stay in the San Marino schools through our parcel tax dollars and contributions to the Schools Foundation.”
The Best Public School Districts ranking provides a comprehensive assessment of the overall experience at public school districts in the United States and Puerto Rico. It uses data sourced from various government and public data sets, Niche’s own proprietary data and 4,624,238 opinion-based survey responses across a variety of topics from 287,606 current students, recent alumni and parents.
