School Choice: Evaluating On-Line Reviews (Part 2)

In my last post, we took a close look at a school review from the Great Schools website.  website. As we saw, although such reviews can be very helpful, they frequently don't tell the complete story. Important, relevant information may be omitted, and although some reviews may seem more "objective" than others, they always reflect the idiosyncratic opinions and biases of their authors.

Still, parent and student reviews are a valuable resource when read critically. One of the first things to look at when evaluating a school review is its date. Usually, the more recent a review is, the more germane it will be. A school's conditions and staff change over time, often dramatically, so although older reviews can provide useful information and suggest trends, focusing on more recent reviews is a good strategy.

Here is another review, written in June 2007, of the same school:

We have been at Turtle Rock for a year having attended several different schools over the years as we have moved about. Our experience at Turtle Rock has been very positive, we have found the teaching to be excellent and the activities challenging, innovative and interesting. The atmosphere is nurturing and positive. Our daughter has responded very well to the high expectations and encouragement.

In contrast to the previous review, this one is positive. It, too, offers perspective—the reviewer's daughter has attended other schools, so the comments presumably reflect comparisons the author has made among them. Moreover, although the reviewer isn't able to address changes over time (a key feature of the previous review), the student has been at the school long enough—one year—for the impressions to be meaningful.

Unfortunately, the review doesn't contain enough details for the reader to do more than simply make note of it as a positive review. We don't know what grade the student was in, and without specific examples of the "excellent" teaching, "challenging, innovative and interesting" activities, and "high expectations and encouragement," getting a real sense of the school is difficult.

Although reading all the reviews for a school can provide a general indication of parent and student satisfaction or lack thereof, ultimately on-line reviews are most useful as red flags and springboards for further research. If possible, that research should take the form of in-person visits to the school and conversations with as many other parents and students as possible. Armed with these personal and on-line data, parents will have a much better chance of choosing a school that offers the qualities and features they're seeking—and is a good fit for their child.

School Choice: Evaluating On-Line Reviews (Part 1)

One of the more interesting resources for parents researching schools is the on-line review. Available at such sites as Great Schools and written by parents and students alike, these reviews can offer useful insights into what attending the school might be like.

Because the reviewers are self-selecting, however, their comments may not accurately reflect a school's environment or qualities and must be taken with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, the reviews often provide useful anecdotal data and are worth evaluating with a critical eye.

As an example, I've selected a review on the Great Schools site for a school my son attended over the course of four years. The more reviews a school has, the wider range of opinions you'll see, and at present this school has 28 reviews—a fairly large number. Here is the most recent, written by a parent in January 2009:

Turtle Rock used to be the finest elementary school in Irvine with their old principal and staff. Unfortunately, the school has been going downhill ever since Sharon Adele retired, and was replaced with ChrisAnn Shane, who closed off the campus to parents and got rid of all the fundraisers (they needed to put ads on the front of the school directories to pay for printing). The APAAS program, especially 6th Grade, went downhill after the four original teachers retired. APAAS used to be based on a higher quality of work and thinking skills. Now it just increases the workload on students, and doesn't prepare them well for later years of school.

This review is particularly useful because it offers the perspective of time and provides specific examples. It also brings up an important issue: the principal's leadership. In this case, the review mentions a principal who retired and her successor.

Unfortunately, reviews don't typically provide context (nor are they obligated to), so the information readers can glean from them is limited. Here, the review doesn't give dates, which would have put the principal succession into a frame of reference. Telling us that the former principal retired in 2004—five years ago—and that her successor was transferred to another school in 2008 would have been helpful. We could have learned that the successor's tenure of four years was long enough to have had what appear to be major negative effects on the school. More important, though, because the review doesn't mention this principal's recent departure, readers will mistakenly assume she is still there and that her alleged poor leadership is a current issue.

The review also mentions parent access and school fundraising problems. Aside from pointing to financial difficulties, which are not unique to this particular school, this comment suggests problems with the school's community. Closing off the campus to parents means they can't mingle with each other as easily, and if they don't work together on fundraising, their opportunities for building community are even more limited.

Finally, the review criticizes the Irvine Unified School District's (IUSD's) APAAS (Alternative Program for Academically Accelerated Students) program, which reportedly went downhill after the original teachers retired. Readers may not know what the acronym APAAS stands for or that the original teachers departed years ago, meaning the current situation has been in effect for a long time.

Still, this comment is potentially very telling, because it summarizes what the APAAS program used to be like and contrasts it with the way it is today. Like the access and fundraising comment, this one should raise a red flag. The review doesn't mention that APAAS is offered in other Irvine schools and implemented differently at each one—an important point for parents considering this program. But the comment clearly points to the need for further research if you're contemplating enrolling your child in the APAAS program at this particular school.

In the next Edupinion post, we'll examine another, very different review of this school. And in the coming months we'll offer a multi-part, in-depth look at the IUSD's ambitious but flawed APAAS program as an example of what to look for—and avoid—in differentiated education for academically advanced students.

Being Thankful for Your Child's School

With the advent of Thanksgiving, taking a closer look at what's good about a child's school can be both heartening and illuminating. As parents, we're often too busy to pay much attention to the particulars of our kids' schools unless something goes wrong. But spending a few minutes reviewing the positive aspects of your child's educational experience can help balance any misgivings you've had and foster a more realistic assessment of a school's merits.

Just as no school is "perfect," every school has at least some things that are working well. Maybe it's a caring teacher, an innovative curriculum, or a large outdoor space. Try to go over all the different parts of your child's day-to-day life at school and see which ones are making—or even exceeding—the grade.

As an example, my own child's current school has terrific teachers, exceptionally thoughtful and intelligent administrators, wonderful courses and extracurricular activities, great indoor and outdoor facilities, an interesting and diverse student body, and a very active, involved parent community. Obviously being thankful for a school like this is easy.

But my child's previous school, which fell short in certain areas, also had numerous things to recommend it, including some great teachers, unusually innovative district-sponsored programs, a safe campus, and many parent-funded supplemental classes and activities. Though as parents we often focused on things that weren't working well, had we taken the time to list all the positives, our feelings about—and engagement with—the school would likely have been different.

So tomorrow, as we all sit around the Thanksgiving table counting our blessings, let's not forget about our children's schools. Each one has something to offer and something we as parents should be grateful for.