The real estate agent said one thing. The neighbors said another. The school district had brochures. Some individual schools offered one-page profiles. But the reality was that I did not gain the insight I needed until my child was in the school, too late to make other arrangements.
Parents have more data now.
Many states, including Virginia and Maryland, require that districts issue annual reports on each school. But those official data sources have their limits. Outsiders looking for detailed information about a school's weaknesses are often made to feel unwelcome. They are told to check the reports filed by official accrediting agencies, but the jargon in those documents is often just short of Serbo-Croatian. Many educators believe that because they are trained professionals, they should decide what kinds of information are useful to the public.