Chris and I are looking at areas to buy a house and of course we want an area with good schools, but how do you determine that?
i wish i could be joking but my dad is the music teacher at a church so he owuld be mad. we had sex, all the time how bad i know but we dont want to wait and he said GREAT OH KAY! and I was really feeling the wets? down there- too embarsed to say- but he acted like man.
Re: Teachers, how do you know a school is good?
Not a teacher, but I started with the local paper. They annually put out a report ranking all the districts and I found that very helpful...
ETA: Yeay!!! good luck!!!
Honestly, property values tell you a lot about how good a district it is.
I would also look at the buildings (do the communities invest in new schools, technology), maybe look at teacher pay (IME the best towns also pay the best), and state test scores... but take with a grain of salt of course.
Just wanted to say the schools in my area aren't really listed on greatschools so it isn't that inclusive. Obviously if towns in your area are listed than it is a helpful guide put together by pro-active parents.
I would do the same thig accountability report card, it should be on their district website, AYP score, a really good school would be above 800, that is a school's goal, but its out of 1000.
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I'm going to come from a different point of view. My step mom works at a school that is primarily made up of middle class "white" or local Hispanics. I work a school that is made up of low income poverty level, Spanish as a first language immigrants. We are in the same district. Her school has an annually auction that raises $70,000 or so a year for different programs in the school. My school has trouble raising $5000 for a very cool dance program. Her school consistently passes the testing. My school makes progress, but never passes. I could keep going with the comparison, but you get the gist. The district requires that we use the same reading and math programs.
And yet, my school consistently gets district administrators and teachers enrolling their children because of our programs. We have a nationally recognized dual language program. These kids continue to out perform their peers at other schools by the 4th and 5th grade. Dual language is a bi-lingual model.
My stepmother's school focuses on the arts. The teacher create some very cool programs.
We put our gifted girls in a charter school. That school got one of the worst testing scores in the state. The girls educational needs are being met, but the principal recognizes that they will need more challenges than they school can give them by the time they hit 10th grade. They placed them in math and English class a grade level ahead to support them. What's more important, they don't come home crying every other day like they were at their elementary school.
I would look at the different schools in your area. Figure out what you want for you children verse what the schools offer. Also, I don't know how big the area is that you live in, but most districts have inter zone transfers.
The most import part of a school is you and your husband. Visit regularly, and be proactive in your kids education. If your child's teacher is not meeting his/her needs talk to the teacher, and if need the administrator. Based on many studies I have read. the number one predictor of a child's success is if they were read to regularly in the first few years of their life.