From The San Francisco Chronicle's article, "California OKs bad school list for transfers":

The state Board of Education put a stamp of approval Thursday on a list of 1,000 schools deemed so bad that parents will have the right to transfer their children to a better school in their district or any other district - this school year.

Only, not all of the schools are what might be empirically considered "bad."  Take, for instance, Cabrillo and Grimmer in the Fremont Unified School District.  Both of these schools were characterized "disinguished schools" by both the state and national government.

The transfer measure is part of the President's "race to the top" program, which seeks to increase competition among schools in the hopes of improving districts' responsiveness to educational need.  A preliminary list of schools targeted for the program can be found at the San Francisco Chronicle article above.

Equally perplexing are the links to the grant criteria and metrics posted at the State's website.  This link, School Improvement Grant (SIG), details the qualification and incentives, and this link, Persistently Lowest-Achieving Schools, does not define either Cabrillo or Grimmer as Tier I, II, or III schools eligible for SIG.

This merits further analytical investigation.