Choosing An Elementary School
Can I choose which public elementary school my child will attend?
Whether or not you get to choose the school that your elementary school child goes to depends so much on the district policies. Some districts have open enrollment policies, which means if another school has an opening, anyone can enroll in it - usually on a first come, first serve sort of basis. Some places even have inter-district enrollment - open enrollment, where you could even put your child in a district that you don't live in. Some districts have charter schools you can apply to attend. They've got magnet schools you can apply to attend. So there's a lot of choice involved there and you can always opt for the private system, too. Other districts it's much harder to do. Your assigned school or nothing. So that's something you want to talk to your assigned school. You also probably want to talk to the district. Sometimes assigned schools do not want to give up students - especially if they've got concerned parents. So they may not give you all the information about how to get out of that school and attend a different one. So, if you don't feel like you're getting all the information should be getting from your neighborhood school, it's definitely worth talking to someone at the district office, or talking to someone at the school you would like to attend.
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.
What are the common mistakes parents make when choosing an elementary school?
When parents pick elementary schools, I think there's two big mistakes that they make. And one is enrolling their child in the school that everyone's enrolling their child into, without kind of thinking, again, 'is this a good match for my child? Is it a good fit? Is it, is it, is it overrated? Is it, is it a school that everyone's just so excited about and everyone'sso excited to get into but it really may not be as good as it sounds?' So that's one thing. I think the other mistake is that parents don't go and investigate the school. They go by test scores, which sometimes can tell you a lot and sometimes don't tell you as much, or they go by student-teacher ratio, or they go by again, what all of their friends say, and the best way to figure out a school is to go in there, get in there and check it out and see what your gut tells you. And, I, the parents that I talk to who actually do go and do that usually seem to be the most happy with their choice in the end. If for no other reason that that they know what the alternatives are and they, they don't have to constantly keep second-guessing themselves, thinking 'oh, maybe I should have chosen that one, maybe I should have chosen that one.'
What is a "magnet school"?
Magnet schools were designed about 4-5 years ago in response to desegregation laws. They were thought of as a way to put specialized programs into schools and hopefully attract students from all over the city. Magnet schools aim to draw in children of all different ethnic backgrounds and from all different neighborhoods into one or two schools.They run differently in different cities: some are first-come, first-served and some of them you have to line up and parents camp out on the sidewalk in order to get in. In Los Angeles magnet schools use a lottery system, but one that takes ethnicity and race into account: if you have a white student and an African-American student applying to a predominantly white magnet school, the African-American students actually have better odds; they'll take more pulls from the hat of the African-American students than from the white students. The reverse is true if it's a predominantly black magnet school, because they're trying to integrate - that's one of the goals of magnet programs. Magnet schools are usually specialized, and usually they attract teachers who are interested in working with a specialized group of kids. As a result, often the schools are a little bit better, as long as it's a good fit for your child. If you have a child who's really math and science focused, you don't want to put them in a humanities or performing arts kind of magnet school, but if you can find a good fit for your child, they're often some of the best educations you can get in the city.
What are the admission requirements for a magnet school?
Admission requirements for magnets vary tremendously. They are public schools, so they are not really allowed to have admissions processes like private schools do. However, at the same time, a performing art magnet school can make you perform an admission audition to make sure that you're a good fit for that program. Some magnet schools are highly gifted magnets, so you have to have a certain IQ score or a certain score on a particular test in order to be admitted. It really depends on the specialization of the magnet school and on your district. One thing that's pretty true across magnet schools is they're hard to get into. Even if your child does qualify, you might not be able to get in. There's often a lot of planning and scheming that goes into the admission process, so again, it comes down to first come first serve and neighborhoods. Parents will wait in line, camp out, wait all night to make sure they are first in line for magnet school admissions. In Los Angeles, for instance, admission is a lottery system. You put in your application and they pull lottery tickets. However, the whole point of the magnet system is to keep a racial balance in the school system, so although it's a random draw, people from different ethnic groups have different odds of getting drawn. We may draw more kids from the Latino pool than the white pool in a predominantly white magnet school. If you have a predominantly black school, you may admit more Latino kids and more white kids than you will African American kids. It's interesting, and there are many ways in which parents can try to game the magnet admission system. They may apply to a school they know - or are pretty sure - they won't get into in order to get priority enrollment the next year in a magnet school they really do want to gain admittance to. You want to talk to your district about magnets, and you want to talk to other parents. You want to identify the parent at your school who's good at this admissions stuff and you want to try to pick his or her brain and find out all of the little tricks. There's someone at almost every school who knows how your district works and that's the person you want to try to talk to.
What is a "charter school"?
Charter schools are relatively new creatures. They are public schools and they receive public funding just like regular public schools. Whatever per pupil monies a school gets, charter schools get the same per pupil monies. However, they don't follow the same rules as regular public schools. There are all kinds of guidelines - how much you pay teachers, what hours teachers can work, what curriculum your supposed to use - that are usually determined by the district, or by the state. In a charter school, the school writes up its own charter, which is basically its own set of rules. Within those rules there will be a kind of achievement of benchmark that the charter school are going to meet within a certain amount of time. For example, "All of our fourth graders are going to be proficient in these subjects by year three." As long as a charter school fulfills their charter - does what they say they are going to do in the charter - the charter will usually be renewed at the end of the year, or second year, or third year. The charter is what they follow, not the rules. Thus, they may quite often pay their teachers more then the base salary within the district, they may have their teachers work longer days or they make their teachers wear a pager and be available to students all the time. Charter schools don't make their charter full. Charter schools can do what ever they want as long as they follow their charter and they meet the targets they're supposed to. We've got a charter school here where part of their curriculum is knitting - they have the kids knit. There's an accelerated charter downtown and they have a whole yoga program. There's all sorts of things that these charters schools can do. There's social justice charter schools that really focus on activism and getting the kids out in the community and being politically involved. There's a lot of latitude in what charter schools get to do. As long as they fulfill their charter, and as long as nothing funky happens at the district or state level, they should be able to continue doing whatever they're doing.
What are the admission requirements for charter school?
Charter schools vary tremendously. One of the things about charter schools is that they write their own charter. So they have a lot of latitude to determine what they want to do. They are public schools, they are supposed to be open to everyone. They don't get to discriminate. They're not magnet schools, so they, at least as far as I know, don't... none of them have race requirements or any kind of race balancing that they're trying to do. One of the special things that charter schools can do is they can, for instance, require parental participation, so they can make parents sign a contract or a promise saying they're going to volunteer a certain number of hours a year. They can make students do more. They can require students to come to Saturday school or come to after-school tutoring. So these are little ways that they can kind of weed out the students and families that they don't want, because they can make the families pledge to do certain things. Beyond that, if more students want to attend a charter school than can, it's usually determined by lottery. Sometimes they do a big public thing. I know a school down here where they have a big to-do. They have a night in which everyone comes to the gym, and they pull numbers out of a basket, and that determines who's been admitted to the charter school and who isn't. So there's a whole lot of hoopla, and it's sort of a big celebration as students are admitted into the school.
Do charter schools charge tuition?
Charter schools are public schools, not private schools. They're publicly funded, so the vast majority of them don't charge anything. Some charter schools may have something in their charter where they can charge some kind of supplemental fee. Many charter schools do spend more - they pay their teachers more and they have better facilities - so it's something you definitely want to ask when you sign up.
Where can I find information about private elementary school options?
Information about private elementary schools comes from a lot of different sources. If you just want to know what kind of private school options you have, I recommend going to a government website, which is http://www.nces.ed.gov/globallocator. There you can put in your zip code or city, and a radius, and it'll pull up every public, private, preschool or college that is within your area. If you click on the private elementary schools from there it'll give you the basic info: if it's religious or co-educational, what teacher-student ratio is, the racial breakdown, etc. From there, most private schools have websites where you can get more information. Most private schools - any private school that I would even consider sending my child to - will have open houses, orientations and programs that you can go to, to actually learn about the school and talk to other parents.
What are the admission requirements for private school?
Admission requirements for private schools vary tremendously. In a place like Los Angeles or New York, in urban areas, competition is fierce. At the kindergarten level, they'll even get essays from parents, they'll get letters of recommendation. Kids sometimes have to go in and do a little assessment. Higher grades they will do admissions tests. Once you get into middle school and high school there are formal admissions tests like the SSAT or the ISCE or the high school placement exam. Every school has their own application process, so you want to go to the school and find out what it is. And many of those admissions processes start really, really early. So in Los Angeles, for instance, you have parents trying to get on the wait list for kindergarten when the mom gets pregnant. So you need to look into these things as early as possible.
Are private schools always "better" than public schools?
Private schools are not always better than public schools. I know plenty of public schools that are better than some private schools, and I know plenty of private schools that are better than some public schools. Thinking about a private school, A, it's still about match, it's still about is this school a good fit for my child. But private schools, are, they're largely unregulated. Almost anyone can start a private school, and they don't have, they don't have to follow the same accountability rules that public schools do. So you can have a fabulous private school, and there are schools here that if I could send my kids to them on scholarships I would do it in a heart beat because I know that they would get a world class education. There are other private schools that I wouldn't send my child to if they would pay me to go, because the standards for their teachers are lower, the class sizes are higher, the curriculum to me sometimes seems a little iffy or a little “fringe-ish,” so you definitely, absolutely want to go and check out a private school very carefully. And especially if they're not accredited or if they're really new you want to be especially critical of them. In any area where there's sort of a tension between private school and public school, you want to be careful talking to any parent. A parent who's paying twenty-thousand dollars a year to have their child in private school certainly feels that that's they way you have to go and they're definitely going to push you in that direction and make you feel a little guilty if you're not willing to shell out the twenty-thousand dollars for private school. A parent who chooses public school but could afford private school is making another kind of decision. They're going to want to justify that decision, “No, this is really a great school, this is a wonderful school, if it weren't of course I'd put my child in private school.” So everyone's got a little bit of an agenda to push and you want to take it all in and you want to think about it, and you also want to take it with a grain of salt and make your own decision.
