Despite the many complaints about the process, it’s an undeniable fact that our district is the state’s highest-performing large urban district. Also, since the all-choice lottery has been in place, more and more schools have turned around, going from struggling and unpopular to highly sought after. And it appears that more and more middle-class families, the demographic that would have gone private without a thought 15-20 years ago, are now choosing SFUSD schools.

Interestingly, SFUSD’s annual School Fair is definitely popular and successful. The first one was run in 2000 by Parents for Public Schools (www.ppssf.org), and then the district took over running it every year since. My theory about why Oakland’s has a different tone is the plethora of charter and maybe other “school reform” models in Oakland, all out there vigorously (and destructively and dishonestly, not to pull punches) touting themselves as superior to public schools.

By contrast, SFUSD has not been a particularly fertile ground for charter schools; we just have a few low-key and not strikingly successful operations. Even the two KIPP schools have trouble attracting enough applicants. So the charters aren’t in much of a position to pound their chests and lift their legs, and the public schools don’t seem to have a heated competition going among themselves. Maybe that’s why our school fair is a pretty benign and successful event.