When it comes to selecting a school for your child, public schools can be a real bargain, but only if you know what to look for in selecting a good school.  Finding a good school can be exhausting, especially when dealing with the anxiety of entrusting your child to the care of someone new.  In these times of choice, school competition, and varying levels of quality, you will want to know what to look for in a prospective school and what roles and responsibilities you may have in making any school a good one.

If you’re wondering where to start, begin by visiting some schools.  There are some necessary ingredients to effective schools.  Some are apparent and can be detected through inspection.  Others require a more intensive examination that can be assisted by asking the right questions.  Recently, I enrolled my daughter in her first school.  She’s less than two, so we weren’t exactly shopping for Advanced Placement (AP) courses just yet.  Yet many of the same rules apply in selecting a school for any age child.

Begin your school tour by finding the answers to several essential questions:

• What is the average number of students per class?
• What special education programs does the school have?
• What extra curricular activities do you offer?
• How are parents and community members involved in the school?

Much of what parents and students want and expect can be found in all parts of the city.  Look for schools that are bright, clean and feel as safe as possible.  Expect the atmosphere and the human interactions with school staff to feel open and welcoming.  This includes the treatment you receive from everyone, including front office personnel, teachers, principals and custodians.  A lack of welcoming personalities at any given school is typically an early sign of low staff morale.  Research shows that where support staff morale is low, so is that of a school’s instructional staff and leaders, resulting in low academic outcomes for children.

Furthermore, you should expect good information and visible directions upon your arrival at any school so that you and the school’s students know what to do and where to go on the important first days of school -- particularly if the school is a new one for your child.  Information about the school’s academic program should be readily available.  For example, ask for a copy of the school’s reading list. 

If your child is already enrolled in a school, you should expect the school and the school system to communicate with you in a helpful and timely way during the summer so that you can make good school decisions and know what to expect before the fall.  This includes timely publication of how well the school performed on mandatory tests the previous spring, so that you can avail yourself of all of your school options for the coming year.  Based on Federal law, these options can include transferring your child to a better performing school, obtaining free public transportation into safer, higher performing schools, or enrolling in free supplemental services that are supplied by the school district through third parties.  Federal law requires all parents to be notified of these options in a plain “easy to read format.”

All of these are components that help build strong school/family partnerships, which lead to greater parent and student satisfaction as well as higher student achievement.  Beyond these issues and characteristics of good schools are a host of additional supports and structures needed to ensure that high quality teaching and learning will take place in every classroom and from day one of the school year. These supports are what DC VOICE, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping to improve DC public schools, has researched and reported on annually as part of its Ready Schools Project (RSP) – now in its fourth year. 

DC VOICE trains community audit teams to visit schools and evaluate school system supports in the areas of recruitment, hiring, training, textbooks, supplies, safety, security and facilities.  Our community auditors assess these areas by asking questions such as:  Were all teachers hired in time for summer training?  Did both the principal and teachers have summer professional development?  Are all required textbooks and supplies in place?   Are computers working and the Internet accessible?  Are sufficient safety and security equipment and personnel in place?

The philosophy of DC VOICE is that the schools belong to the community and that community members have a right to know what is occurring in their schools.  Everyone has a responsibility as parents and community members to help schools be the best places they can be for the city’s students.  One way to fulfill that responsibility is to become an RSP Community Auditor and help to collect information that leads to school improvements. And by participating, you will also learn valuable assessment techniques that will help you as you choose your child’s schools in the future.

Jeff Smith is the Executive Director and Erika Landberg is Program Director of DC VOICE. This year RSP Community Audit Teams will visit over 100 District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) as well as several dozen charter schools.  If you are interested volunteering to be an RSP Community Auditor, contact DC VOICE at 202-986-8535 or email RSP@dcvoice.org.  Please visit www.dcvoice.org for more information.