How to find Good Schools For Your Child
Seeing as a good education is the key to any child’s future success, parents are always heavily invested in finding the best day schools for their children. This may range from the best preschools around to finding top quality elementary, middle, and high schools as well. What is more, parents can choose between private and public schools, and there are reasons to consider each option. The parent of a three-year-old may have the benefits of daycare on their mind, but a preschool can offer more than a simple daycare will. A good preschool can provide not only the benefits of daycare for a child, but also a quality education that will help prepare that young student for elementary school and beyond. So, how are parents to find these good schools, and what do private preschools offer that public ones don’t? And what about students with special needs? There is a solution for everyone.
All About Preschools
While attending preschool and other pre-K programs is not mandatory for American children, the benefits are many, and they go well beyond the benefits of daycare centers. Many studies have been done to track the education of American children aged three to five, and the numbers are encouraging. In recent decades, the rate of preschool enrollment has grown rapidly, and the quickest growth took place from 1990 to 2000. The enrollment rate of three-and four-year-old children expanded from 33% and 56% (respectively) in 1990 to 41% and 66% in 2012. And as of 2015, the numbers show that 87% of all American children aged five were enrolled in pre-K programs of some kind or another. Children of all different backgrounds are enrolled frequently in preschool, and some argue that making a school’s identity more multinational will benefit students for the global nature of the 21st century. After all, American youths today are more diverse than they have ever been.
What does a preschool provide for the students there? A pre-K program is more robust than a regular day care center, and those two things are not to be confused with one another. In addition to the benefits of daycare, a preschool is a proper academic setting where the young students will learn how to learn, get used to following teacher directions, meet and play with their peers, and overall get ready for elementary school. This can give a child a real head start, and private preschools may offer the most resources. Not all preschools are private ones, but they are privately funded and run (hence the name) and boast expert teachers and robust funding. Still, a highly rated public preschool may be nearly as good in some regards, and parents can find them after a thorough search.
Finding Good Preschools
When a family moves to a new city or county, or when their child becomes old enough for preschool, the parents can conduct a search online to get started. This means entering a fairly specific search query to narrow down the results, and this is especially important for large cities such as Miami, Boston, and Los Angeles. The search may specify not only the town or city name, but the local ZIP code, and the desired school type (public or private, or even both). In either case, and especially for finding public preschools, the parents can specify that they want the top-rated or best schools around. Doing this will bring up a whole list of results, and the parents can strike out schools that won’t suit their needs, such as those deemed too far away or those that aren’t accepting new students anyway.
Now the parents can visit a preschool in person, and get a fair impression of what the school is like while also consulting the staff to review each teacher’s credentials. The parents can also see what sort of programs the school offers, and see how well funded it is. For return visits at promising schools, the parents should bring their child, and determine if the youngster feels comfortable there and gets along with the staff. A good school is one where the child is at ease and accepted by their peers, and properly challenged by the coursework but not overwhelmed. This applies to elementary schools, too.
