Education and attending school are, in many ways, the most important part of growing up. This is where you not only learn the academic skills for the future, whether those skills are for secondary school or the workforce, as well as learn how to socialize in a setting with their peers. This experience is invaluable and shouldn’t be taken lightly. For parents, this means it’s important to find the best school possible, be it looking into the advantages of attending private schools, the public school district, or day care. Do these schools offer pre k for 3-year-olds and have computer labs, or do they offer extracurriculars that will help your child grow?
One of the most important things to know is what school district you’re in, as this can determine who oversees education in your area. To find this out it is important to look up your school district by zip code and then learn as much as you can about it. Below are a few things to research.
Test Scores in the District
It’s very important to know how students in a particular district do on tests overall. That’s because testing, particularly tests that go beyond middle and elementary school like the SAT and ACT, have a large impact on a student’s future. This can include what college a student is able to get into out of high school. 1060 is the national average for the SAT, while at private schools it sits at 1235. Clearly, there can be a large difference between different schools and districts that you should be aware of. So by knowing that you’re sending your child to a district that generally produces students who do well on these standardized tests, you know your child will have a better chance to succeed in them. This can be made into an even smaller scale, as individual schools have different levels of success in such things, which should always be considered.
What Students Go on To Accomplish
In a similar vein to understanding test scores in a school district by zip code, it’s worth understanding what students go on to do. Is this a school district that most students go on to a four-year college from? Do more students go towards a trade? Whatever the answer may be, it could be a sign of how teachers and guidance counselors educate and mentor students. Furthermore, it speaks to the general mentality and attitude of students in the district, which is worth knowing for the benefit of your own child’s education.
Who is the Superintendent and School Board?
At the end of the day, the superintendent and school board are the ones who are in charge of running the school district. This includes budgeting, scheduling, and working on the curriculum and how students learn the said curriculum. It’s worth knowing who these members are, as they are often elected positions to the school board so that you can be involved in understanding their decisions and how those decisions will affect your child’s education.
Public schools are run by the school district, but, as their name implies, private schools are generally free from being told exactly how to run their school by the district. This means that if your child attends private school there is less of a need to know what school district by zip code you’re in because while there is some interaction between the school and the district, there is less than it would be if it was a public school and knowing the school district by zip code would be very important to check on how the district is being run.