If you have young children in San Francisco, you’ve heard this: The public schools are terrible, so flee to the suburbs if you can, or you’ll pay a small fortune for private education.
Recently, these views made their way into an article in The Standard, “It’s raining money for Marin realtors on private-school rejection day,” which quoted a handful of parents and real estate agents badmouthing San Francisco schools. This comes as no surprise to veterans of public school advocacy, but it is infuriating nonetheless. These claims about the overall quality of San Francisco’s public schools simply aren’t true, and they hurt enrollment and funding.
The myths repeated in the media, online, and in our communities often have three basic claims. Let’s consider each.
Claim: SF’s public schools are “bad.” Suburban public schools and SF’s private schools are “good.”
Too often in conversations about education, people make assumptions about school quality based on shortcuts, like student demographics or GreatSchools ratings. They use ambiguous terms like “good” and “bad,” which may refer to test scores or something else entirely.
But if “good” means strong academic outcomes, then let’s talk about data. High schools in the San Francisco Unified School District are graduating a higher percentage of UC- and CSU-eligible students than any other county in the Bay Area: 72%, compared with 68% in Marin and 66% in San Mateo County. Our schools are also graduating more students overall (90%), compared with the state as a whole (87%), even though state graduation rates are at an all-time high. This month, four SFUSD elementary schools were named 2025 California Distinguished Schools, tying with San Ramon Valley for the most of any Bay Area district.
When people call a school “bad,” they usually mean test scores are low. Test scores and ratings closely reflect a student’s family income, not necessarily the quality of the school. According to an analysis by the education news website Chalkbeat, the average GreatSchools rating for schools with the most low-income students is four points lower (on a ten point scale) than the average rating for schools with the fewest low-income students. But a school labeled “bad” by GreatSchools or another source might actually be making huge strides in helping students grow. More learning may be happening there than at a “good” school where families are paying for private tutors on the side.
Of course, there’s more to school than standardized tests and transcripts. Most San Francisco families want their kids to grow up in classrooms that reflect the world — filled with a variety of languages, cultures, and experiences. SFUSD offers dual-language programs starting in kindergarten, world-class arts partnerships (with the SF Symphony, for example), and enrichment experiences (like field trips to Chinatown) that can be had only in a city like ours.
Claim: Affluent families are fleeing because SFUSD is exceptionally dysfunctional.
SFUSD has real challenges: declining enrollment, shrinking budgets, and the end of pandemic-era funding. These issues are serious, but suburban districts across the Bay Area face similar challenges. Even wealthy districts in Fremont, Lafayette, and Mill Valley are having to make cuts as they confront the same trends. (Since 2019, enrollment has declined 8% in SFUSD, compared with 7% in Fremont, 9% in Lafayette, and a whopping 20% in Mill Valley.)
Families leave San Francisco for all kinds of reasons: more space, a lower cost of living, a belief that the suburbs offer a simpler life. But implying that it’s always because SFUSD is some uniquely broken system? That’s just not true.
Claim: Parents in the suburbs are more involved because they are wealthy.
Here the Marin real estate agents cross into flat-out disrespect. Our district’s families come from all walks of life, and they are deeply involved in their schools. They volunteer in classrooms, lead PTAs, and advocate at school board meetings. The suburbs have wealthy parents, but parental involvement isn’t just a dollars game. It’s about commitment — and our city’s families show up. (But if it sometimes is a dollars game, plenty of SF parents donate what they can to their kids’ schools, as well as to other schools.)
It’s clear that the Marin real estate agents have never set foot in an SF public school. If they had been at Excelsior’s Guadalupe Elementary a few weeks ago, they would have seen a group of parents, grandparents, and caregivers — all representing an underserved community — who took time from their day to learn how to support their kids’ reading development. If they attended school board meetings, they would hear passionate parents of all backgrounds advocating for their kids. These are not outliers. That’s who we are in SFUSD.
Why this narrative is harmful
People who push the “bad” school narrative are causing real harm. When real estate agents, Marin parents, or anyone else repeats tired stereotypes about urban schools being “bad,” they hurt real kids and families. They feed myths that push parents away from strong schools that serve diverse communities. They reinforce housing segregation and inequity. They make the hard work of improving public education even harder.
SFUSD isn’t perfect. But neither is Palo Alto, Piedmont, or San Ramon. Many San Francisco families aren’t running away. Many of us are here by choice, proud of our city and its public education system, and determined to make our schools even better. We want our kids to be academically successful, but we also want them to grow into kind, empathetic people who know how to live in a diverse world. That’s what SFUSD offers. And it’s why many of us stay.
Marin real estate agents, next time you want to talk about SF public schools, learn more about the ratings you’re relying on. Talk to families whose kids attend the schools you’re bad-mouthing. Do your homework.
Jennie Herriot-Hatfield is a K-12 education consultant, former elementary school teacher, and public school parent in San Francisco. She chairs the board of directors for SF Parent Coalition, which advocates for a thriving, equitable school system.