oblivion

I grew up in the USA and went to a school system that was somewhat below par by some standards. I live in the UK now, and my son attends infants school and is doing brilliantly with it. I have two other children that are not yet school-aged. The one thing that concerns me about possibly moving to the USA is the chance that my children's educational opportunities will dramattically decrease if we move to the wrong area. I'm sure it is general parental paranoia, but because my son has done so much better in the british school system than I did in the american one, I can't help but wonder how much of it is down to the school itself.

Is there a way of finding out in advance what the local school systems are like? You know the basics...how good they are, drop-out rates, test score levels, ...and (though I hate to think about it) drug and teen-pregnancy statistics. I know that where you live dictates which school system you go to, so the school system will play a big part of deciding what area to move to.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

yorkshirelass

www.greatschools.net would be a start!

oblivion

Thanks for that...I'll have a look.

Englishmum

We had some 'school report cards' FedExed out to us by realtors (Weichert and I think Burgdorff)

http://www.weichert.com (they are all over the US I think) from certain towns we thought we might be interested in living in - but to be honest the report cards didn't mean very much to us as we didn't understand a thing about the American education system.....having info on the salaries of superintendents, teachers and admin staff at each school didn't give us a lot to go on! I certainly don't recall seeing statistics on teen pregnancy and drop out rates though LOL!

I'm fairly sure that you can now find the 'school report cards' for most (if not all) public schools in the US online....just 'google' "School Report Cards" and the name of the State you are interested in.

Do you have any idea of which State (and towns) you might want to live in?

Basically the more expensive the housing, the better the schools tend to be - and yes, this is an occurence found worldwide. I'm sure that you know that many parents in the UK have the desire to get into a good school catchment area and this definitely has a positive effect on house prices - my sister's house is apparently worth 20% more than a similar house just outside the catchment area that her house is in, purely because she's in a top school district. This desire to live in a good school district happened amongst the local population in Singapore too and certainly here in this part of the US where we are living.

We live in a very small house indeed in the suburbs of the New York metro area, but the town is considered 'affluent' and the high school has the top SAT scores in New Jersey (1247) and indeed is considered one of the top public schools in the USA (Millburn High School).

http://www.millburn.org

The reasoning is that if you have a good school district, property prices will appreciate more than those in a less desirable school district. Of utmost importance to us was to find a good school for our son - we moved here from Singapore when he had just completed Year 6 at a British school and went into Grade 6 (Middle School) in NJ. We could have had a much larger house in other local towns in our vicinity but the trade-off for us was to have a small house in a top school district....but hopefully our house should then sell quickly when we leave here.

I (still) find it astonishing that with many parents of my son's classmates being Wall Street investment bankers, stockbrokers, CEOs, attorneys and surgeons is that they send their kids to the local public schools....this would never happen in the UK, they'd all be in private schools! On the other hand, our housing tax last year was very high indeed and the local private (non-Catholic schools) have kindergarten fees beginning at circa $20,000 per pupil per year for a day school!

I guess at the end of the day, just think of 'location, location, location' and go for the best school district you can afford to live in and compromise on house size if necessary.

Good Luck!

yorkshirelass

This article might help you as well:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7723397/site/newsweek/?g=1

oblivion

:scared: That is scary! I'm looking for schools in Kentucky, and I know that it's viewed as a low-education state in general. The schools I went to were frightfully inadequate IMHO, but the area we're considering moving to does have some of the best schools in the state. It's just a case of weedling down to the right ones. I would say I'm an education snob, but then when you consider where I'm wanting to move to then maybe I'm not.

Jan Alaska

we found that realtor.com had both info on real estate and schools etc, if I remember right they give links to performance charts etc. You can also house-hunt at the same time

Jan

rochdalediva

If you're just interested in Kentucky, the KY Dept of Education has a Kentucky Schools Directory at
http://www.education.ky.gov/KDE/Abou...+Directory.htm

on the left hand side there's a link to the school report cards. It's also a pretty good bet that if the realtors are mentioning the school district in the ad then it's probbaly got a good reputation.

Good Luck

Nigel

School systems vary greatly by state and by town. Some states do a better job than others and it's not always easy to compare across states since the education systems are not controlled centrally as they are in the UK.

Real estate offices are always a good place to go for info on schools. My advice as a Realtor myself is to find a Realtor who has experience of relocating people, especially from outside the USA. I am constantly making people aware of the difference in schooling from one town to the next. I have three children going through two different school districts myself and I have personal experience of just how big a difference moving from one district to another can have on a child's success.

There are a number of National franchised real estate companies such as Keller Williams Realty (www.kw.com) Coldwell Banker (www.coldwellbanker.com) but the thing to remember is every Realtor is an independent Agent and using a national brand is no guarantee you are going to get a Realtor that knows what they are doing, let alone one that understands the difficulty of relocation. Your best bet is to work with a Realtor who is referred to you by someone you know. A good Realtor will be able to help you find all the info you need on good school districts. Regardless, the national brand websites usually have info on school districts or links to the State stats.

You should also try State websites. I know the Massachusetts State site has school reports for the whole state on it. (http://www.mass.gov/portal/index.jsp?pageID=mg2subtopic&L=4&L0=Home&L1=Reside nt&L2=Education&L3=K-12&sid=massgov2)

You can expect to pay more for a home in a good school district so another option would be to consider a private school. If you are lucky enough to live in one of the cities that The British School operates in you can even pay to have your children educated in the UK style while in the US. (www.britishschool.org).

I hope this helps.

Nigel
Duxbury, MA

Englishmum

To the O/P:

Well, you may be in luck.

I've just discovered a website which lists all the schools in the USA which offer the International Baccalaureate courses. There are various programmes eg. the 'early years' programme for those at infant and junior school level, leading up to the elite IB Diploma.

This is a wonderful 2 year course - even more rigorous than taking "A" levels - it's broader and compulsory courses include taking a foreign language, arts, maths, english, science courses etc. My daughter's school in Singapore (United World College of South East Asia - they get the best IB Diploma results worldwide) offered it after IGCSE's were taken and they also offer the early and middle school years components. We left when our daughter had taken her IGCSE's but a friend's daughter who was a couple of years older took the IB; she had to do some form of overseas charity project and she worked with the Christina Noble orphanage in Vietnam. She did well and read English at Oxford University.

The beauty of the IB is that it is recognized by universities throughout the world - a boon for kids with dual nationality. For example, I have the prospectus for Brunel University....some of their engineering courses have an IB requirement of 30 points, other courses have a requirement of 36 points.

We were rather annoyed that the relocation group who handled our move to NJ misinformed us; they told us that there were no schools offering the IB in the area we were hoping to move to (our daughter had been recommended to take the IB Diploma, there is also the IB Certificate which is less academically taxing). We subsequently found out that there are a couple of schools which do offer the IB - one is a private school but the fees are too outrageous, but there is also a state/public school which offers it.....this would have been ideal.

Anyway....here is the link to the list of all the schools (private and state/public) which offer the IB in the United States....and yes this includes KY.

http://www.ibo.org/ibo/index.cfm?pag...ch&usecache=no

Main page for more info about the IB:

http://www.ibo.org

oblivion

Thanks to everyone who replied. As it turns out, the area I'm wanting to move to apparently has the best schools in the state. That's definitely set my mind at rest.

BritGuyTN

It would persoanlly not set my mind at rest, the least shit out of a bunch of crap schoools is not anything good

have you considered private school?

What city in KY are you moving to? Louisville/Lexington?

oblivion

Neither. I grew up near Lexington and the schools in that area of the state are hideous. Okay - that's based on my opinion from 15 years ago, but...I still have no desire for my kids to grow up in east KY. As for Louisville - I don't want to be in any large cities at all, which I know compared to Nashville or Memphis it's not really, but it's big enough.

I'm a country girl at heart and want my kids to be as well. We live in a rural area in the UK, so I don't want them too shell-shocked if we move. We'll be in west KY, near the Land Between the Lakes - if things go as planned.

As it is, I've spoken to the guidance councillors and other people at the school district I'm interested in and they operate in a similar way to the schools my kids are in now, so it's set my mind a bit more at ease.

BritGuyTN

Louisville is actually fairly big now, especially since thay incorporated a large chunk of surrounding land into the metro area.

I'm pleased you are getting on Ok with the school board. My biggest issue about sending kids to school is the potential crap about intelligent design

i've had educated people my age tell me that the dinosaurs didn't exist and that man came from adam and eve, and frankly, I can't deal with that

Scarlett-Dallas

Another thing to consider... You may get lucky and land somewhere where they have a Magnet system. We did.

We began by renting an apartment in the catchment area of the best school we could find. I had researched it really well before we moved, and it was the right thing to do because the girls settled in really well.

A couple of years down the line, we heard about the Magnet system. These are groups of specialized schools within a district. They're free, but you have to apply to get in, and they only take applications once a year. If you get in, a bus will take your kid from anywhere in the district to their Magnet school.

What's good about them? They have various specializations. There are arts Magnets, science Magnets, Talented and Gifted Magnets, Montessori Magnets. They have WAY more resources than the other schools and highly specialized teachers. The school my girls got into goes from pre-K through eighth grade and is small and friendly, so no horrific Middle School experiences. Most of the kids from these schools get into the Magnet high schools which often offer dual-credit--meaning your kid graduates high school with a diploma and an Associates and has just two years left to do a Bachelors.

It was a big thing for us when our kids got into this school. Until then we'd been living in an area where we could not afford to buy a house. The elementary school was great, but by this time the oldest was a year off Middle School (she got bumped up a whole grade-level on her first day), and it looked terrible. The earlier posters who say put the school first and the size of home second are spot on. If your kids are happy, you can cope with anything, and you can always up-size later. Once the girls got into the Magnet system, we could live anywhere in the school district, so we found our dream home and moved in. They, meanwhile, revel in things like Math Olympiad, daily piano lessons, and pre-AP classes.

I was determined to make the girls' school THE priority when we moved, and I've never regretted it. No time spent on that research is wasted! My kids went from a UK village school with less than 100 kids to a monstrous--to me, at the time--elementary. But everybody said it was the best. I took them in on the first day (they must have been ages 6 and 7 or 7 and 8) and told them I would bring them and pick them up every day, I would be outside the school waiting before the bell rang etc. etc. I paced all day. At home time I couldn't find them--they were busy chatting to new friends. They told me not to bother bringing them in in the morning. They just wanted to be dropped off at the school bus stop so they could travel with their friends.

Good luck, and happy hunting!

Regards
-=-
Scarlett