What qualities should I look for in an elementary school?
One of the most important qualities you want to look for in an elementary school, is finding a school that's a good fit for your child. This is especially true if you're looking at private schools, magnet schools, specialized schools. The school that maybe everyone in your neighborhood wants to go to or is the most popular may not be the right fit for your child. If you have a crazy little kid who likes to get in trouble or tends to not do things he doesn't want to do, a really loose progressive school is probably not the best fit for him. At the same time if you have a child who is easily intimidated, really creative, really scared of getting things wrong, a strict and structured school might not be the best fit for that child. So you want to look for a good match. You want to look for an administrator who will talk to you, so the one thing I always recommend parents do is make an appointment to meet the principal and talk with them. A principal who won't meet with you, a principal who is abrupt with you, you've got to think that you will have that experience when your child is at that school as well. Talk to other parents, talk to teachers, see if you can sit in on some classes and see what the teaching style is like. You definately want to ask about class size, about teacher-student ratios. A lot of ratios include paraprofessionals or include the special ed teacher who only works with a handful of kids. So ask for class size, and ask for class size in the grade you're enrolling in. You can ask for the future too, but if you're enrolling a 4th grader the Kindergarten class size isn't going to help you at all. Class size is important. The fewer kids sititng there, the more attention the teacher can give your child. Again, I don't think any of the objective characteristics are as important as going to the school and feeling like, okay, this teacher is a good fit for my kid. This administrator is really responsive when I come talk. These children on the playground they seem like they're nice to each other, and they're happy. So there's all these qualitiative things that you can't tell from a website.
