It's sort of like Amazon reviews - until there are 25 or so, you don't really have a representative sample. Even then, 5 of the posts could be the same disgruntled parent or teacher. But once you have 20 or 25 reviews, you start to get basic trends.

Don't read it then.

None.

A little bit of weight. I think it's more for parents like myself who aren't in the private school circle, so you try to gather information from as many sources as possible to get a genuine perspective of a school.

I actually think both sites are valuable as input. However, greatschools.net is very limited because they edit every comment. For example, I wrote that our school has had five different heads of school in six years and they deleted that information. This was very useful information. I also wrote that one of our schools had 25% of the kids leaving the school each year and they deleted this information.

Anonymous wrote:It's as silly as paying attention to comments on DCUM.

The only positive DCUM has over GreatSchools is that you sometimes can "cross examine" DCUM claims to test their veracity.

I don't get emotional about it one way or the other, but I definitely use it as a guide to check facts. There are school handbooks and I can ask questions on tours. It gives me a place to start. I might like the same things other people don't. I don't discount information just because someone thinks it's a negative. I might be okay with it. People say you should talk to people at the schools but that is hard. People there are usually the ones who will tell you how great it is. That is why they are there. The ones who left the school will tell you how horrible it is. That is why they left. The best people to ask is people who had kids who graduated two or three years ago so you can find out how those kids are doing in HS. After that, HS has had more of an effect than ES. Some recent graduates may not want to say anything bad about the school because it will make them look bad if that is where they came from in my experience.

zero - there's so much misinformation about my kid's school that I've decided it is worthless.

Anonymous wrote:It's as silly as paying attention to comments on DCUM.

Same here.

Or lots of post close together. Did something happen? Did administration ask people to go online? Did administration fill it out? I look for common themes like the schoo head is unapproachable.

I don't look at the stars, but I look at the comments. If the comments are "X teacher is crazy" I question whether there is a problem with that teacher or with a set of parents and that teacher. If the comments pertain to policies, I check into those policies to see whether they have validity. I also wonder about a school with too many posts. It smacks of controversy, which is something I'm wary of.

There's always someone with an axe to grind.

I would take anything with a grain of salt that you read online even DCUM. Talk to actual parents, visit the school etc.

It's as silly as paying attention to comments on DCUM.

Zero. It's silly.

There is a running thread where a poster asks about some harsh reviews in greatschools.org about a school that otherwise has a very good reputation. In general, how much importance do people give / should people give to greatschools reviews?