There are several steps you should follow to research a school and school district.
Online Steps:
Start your research on the Internet. Visiting the various websites and reviewing the information. If you are reviewing many schools and districts, it might help to put together a basic spreadsheet to store the data for later assimilation and review.
1. A very informative site to begin with is a site called SchoolMatters.com. It is created by Standard and Poors. At first it feels a bit clunky to search, but once you have muddled through it once – it seems easier. Searching for all the districts in a county was a pretty clean way to do a top level comparison. The following two links take you to the search results page for Tarrant and Dallas counties. When you click on the link for the district name – it brings up lots of good statistical data for review.
After reviewing these sites, you can get more specific with the districts that interest you.
2. Review the school district web site. The easiest way to go about this is to go to Google and search on the school district name. That will bring up the district’s site in the results.
3. Review the website for the specific school you are researching (usually you can link to the specific schools from the district site)
4. Review the state test scores for the school you are researching. This link will take you to the reports section of the Texas Education Agency site. Texas Education Agency Official School Reports
5. Review the extra curricular activities of the school you are researching
In-Person Steps:
Regardless of what your research tells you numbers-wise for a district, some schools are better suited for your family than others. Even in districts with lower ratings, a good school with an excellent principal will make all of the difference in your child’s experience. After you have done your research online, it is good to do some additional investigative work on your top picks:
1. Tour the campus and see how well it is maintained and how well the kids are behaving and interested in learing.
2. At this time it is also a good idea to interview the principal to see if the school will be a good fit for your child.
3. Interview some parents of students to get their impression and thoughts on the school. This takes a bit more creativity, but hearing from parents who are actually experiencing the school environment first hand will give you invaluable insights.
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