Reply to AAP at Base School vs. Going to Center School

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Reply to "AAP at Base School vs. Going to Center School"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]That is even more difficult to find out.  [b]How do you do that easily other than just looking at test scores and demographics and reading great schools or this board[/b]?[/quote]
17:16 here.  It is quite easy to find a school you love that fits the personality of your family and kids.  We found two (a small, loving, intimate base and a big, exciting, challenging center).  We did the common sense things.

We talked to people in the neighborhood.  In the case of both schools, people said things like "We love our school" "The teachers are wonderful" "It really is the best place to go to school" "We knew that we only wanted to buy in this school".  No one complained about other parents.  No one bean counted between who was smarter/slower/didn't belong/etc.  No snark.  Very few teacher complaints (in fact, any mention of the staff at both schools was almost consistently glowing).  Both of these places were filled with students, teachers and parents who had the type of character, priorities and values that we would want our kids to grow up around and that we would want to be around.

In terms of web research, yes, we used Great Schools and the fcps site for test scores and demographics, but that was a piece of the puzzle.  We looked at the school websites, and more importantly the PTA websites (you can learn a ton from comparing all the things the PTA does/does not do for the school).  The PTA websites are where you get a great feel of the personality of the schools.  DCUM was helpful in showing us what schools we wanted to avoid.  A school might be considered "cream of the crop" but if the only side the parents show about this school is snarking at each other, constant comparison and bean counting, infighting, trying to one up each other, and distain for students who transfer into the school or who do/do not make the AAP cut, then we knew that would not be the type of environment that would help our children become loving, successful, contributing, happy adults.

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Great post!
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