touring schools in 2020

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First a few basics:
Elementary schools sometimes have the same number in different boroughs. When you do a google search, look for the “PS ‘XO’, Brooklyn” or “Queens” or “Manhattan” when searching for a specific program.

  1. You can find tons of information on www.insideschools.org. They are essentially the Consumer Reports for NYC public schools.
    IF YOU ARE A CURRENT PARENT OR STUDENT LOOKING FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL OR HIGH SCHOOL - please, please go to your current elementary or middle school’s listing and leave the kind of detailed and thoughtful review you would like to be reading about the potential programs that you are now looking for. We need to help each other. Pay it forward. Right now. Please! Don’t forget.

  2. Join Inside Schools+ a free thoughtful forum about individual schools and admissions issues of all kinds. They are also offering classes for free and for fee (as a fundraiser for this worthy resource).

  3. Look at the school’s Quality Review and Dashboard. It sometimes gets a little wonky but there is a world of info there. As long as you are on Inside Schools, at the bottom of the green tabs on the right of the review, it will say, “more DoE statistics for this school”. Click on that and then, “School Quality” and you will see the Quality Report, School Performance Dashboard and the State Report Card. Data doesn’t tell the full story, but it is a place to start.

  4. Searching for schools with the best test scores can be a flawed metric. It tells you more about the people applying than about the culture of the school including the strength of the teaching, leadership, enrichments or facility. The most interesting and successful programs may not have the tippy top scores, but instead have a solid group of learners and more nuanced numbers.

  5. Go to youtube and vimeo and search for videos of the school name or number and its borough. BUT MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE THE RIGHT NUMBER IN THE RIGHT BOROUGH!

  6. Schools will undoubtedly be putting Zoom open houses and Virtual tours on their admissions tabs soon. There is no ultimate clearing house for this information. You need to just keep refreshing their admissions tabs.

Some schools have wonderful filmmakers highlighting them, and in some, the production values are not as high. It is hard not to love the schools with pretty videos but there are worthy programs out there that sometimes have less compelling talking heads. Listen to what they are saying, and try to give them the benefit of the doubt in how they are saying it. You don’t want to miss out on a school that is wonderful just because they didn’t have an award winning documentarian on the PA. I know GREAT principals that turn to stone in front of a camera. That is not their fault!

If you are a family or staff of a school and you have a video that people should see. Let me know! I am only one person (although my daughter is addicted to finding heartwarming school videos online) - please help me, help you get the word out.