Many people with children who are planning to move to the US have heard about the need to carefully choose their area of residence. It is especially important to understand which schools belong to the chosen address.
After the move, the head is usually spinning and there is no time to figure out the intricacies. It is important to understand and remember the following: websites of real estate agencies and aggregators such as , do not provide up-to-date and correct information about the belonging of a particular address to a particular school!
The following is a step-by-step guide to identifying schools associated with a specific address and analyzing those schools.
First, a small cheat sheet (information may vary slightly for different states):
Elementary School – c K (Kindergarten) up to 5th grade (from 5/6 to 10/11 years old)
Middle school – from 6th to 8th grade (from 11 to 14/15 years old)
high School – from 9th to 12th grade (from 15 to 18 years old)
K-8 - combined Elementary + Middle, more common in new development areas and sparsely populated areas.
charter school - charter schools. Private schools funded by the state. They require a separate story. In short, a good charter school is chosen by lot. Therefore, they cannot be guided as a “default” school.
magnet school – specialized schools with additional subjects.
Sometimes it is possible to study in the same school for all ages K-12 (usually in different buildings). It is important to understand that in this case, the school ratings will most often refer to High School.
In any case, you need to carefully read and check all the information in each case.
1) By far one of the most convenient sites for finding real estate is
You can start your search from there. The interface of the site is intuitive, but the boundaries of the districts related to schools are not completely and not always correct.
For the initial review, you can make a filter by the rating of schools by turning off private, charter and choosing a rating of more than 7. Decent areas are already visible by the concentration of good schools. Please note that Zillow uses website data , the interpretation of which is a separate conversation.
So, we roughly determined the area where we want to live. Having turned on the filter by the price of rent or purchase, we are sadly convinced that there are very few options.
But it is important to make sure that the options that are available are suitable for us.
View information about the selected object:
In this case, the work of checking the correctness of the information about the school was done by the agent. And his information confirms Zillow's data. This is a rather rare option, but even in this case, I recommend making sure the information is correct.
Another picture is more often seen:
There is a strange situation here. Only Elementary and Middle are listed on Zillow. The agent gives three schools, but the Middle school is different.
Let's try to figure it out and find these schools
Let's move on to the next step:
2) Determine the County we are interested in.
County is the smallest autonomous territorial entity in the United States. There are more than 3000 of them in total. They are responsible for the schools in their territory. The biggest problem is that counties most often have unique websites, registration systems, accounting, etc.
Very often counties divide one city into several parts. Sometimes in quite unexpected ways. Orlando (Florida) split example:
As you can see, Orlando is divided into 3 counties. And 3 more counties cover the outlying suburbs.
You can determine the county using the service or similar.
I'm sure everyone knows what a ZIP is, but let me remind you that this is a five-digit postal code, usually indicated at the end of the address, after the state name. In the examples above, ZIP 32828 and 32746.
On the resource above, we make sure that this is Orange County and Seminole County
3) We are looking for a link to the service for determining whether schools belong to an address. Due to the fact that the sites of all counties are different and saturated with information, it is often difficult to quickly find the way to the service. The easiest option is to type in Google a query like: "orange county school enrollment»
Google will helpfully point you to the right link. We go through it and fill out the form. It seems that everything is obvious here, but here the lack of a unified approach begins to affect and bugs and glitches appear. Sometimes there is sensitivity to case, extra spaces, etc.
If a particular house fails to “break through”, you need to check a couple of neighbors by taking the address from the same Zillow.
There is an alternative option - to find a map of school zones on the county website, but there it is often difficult to clearly define the boundaries.
Fill in and get the list of schools:
In this case, it can be seen that for Elementary and Middle, the address is served by the same school: Wedgefield, which is PK-8, i.e. takes children from kindergarten to 8th grade inclusive.
For Seminole County, the picture is quite different:
Please note that the real situation does not match either the agent data or the Zillow website data.
Moreover, for Elementary some Region2 is specified. This means that several Elementary schools are linked to this address at once. A specific list can be obtained by clicking on the link:
Specifically, for the 2nd region - three Elementary at once, and one of them is Magnet - i.e. with specialization.
Unfortunately, it usually happens that these schools differ greatly in quality. Parents can choose, but when places run out in a good school, lottery begins. In short, if there is a bad school on the list, and you start studying from the middle of the year, the chances are very high that you will end up in the worst one, since there will no longer be places in good schools.
Now we need to check the quality of schools. To do this, go to the next step.
4) We break through the school on rating sites. In the US, there are several popular school evaluation websites that differ in their methods. It is worth paying attention to the following:
Every site has pros and cons. The analysis of the school on all sites allows you to get an integrated assessment.
Fortunately, Google itself adjusts the links:
Please note that Schooldigger is the least popular site and does not always appear on the first page. But, in this case, we were lucky and the links go in a row.
Also, the problem is that due to the popularity of some names, there may be several schools with the same name in different states. We need to keep a close eye on this, paying attention to County.
Let's try to consider the result.
5) Niche.com
It is Niche that many realtors are guided by when they promise "A-rated School"
However, the problem is that the Niche ranking is integral and only partially dependent on academic success. It can be seen that this school has A + only for diversity. The ethnic composition is implied: Latinos, Black American, etc.
You can see more details below:
Also an important indicator of "Free or Reduced Lunch" is an indirect indicator of the level of income. The lower this figure, the better.
6) Now let's see Greatschool
Here the assessment is on a 10-point scale. 4/10 - bad.
This site has the most reviews, where parents and students rate the school. This also needs to be paid attention to.
If you watch a 9/10 or 10/10 school, read the reviews carefully. Parents often complain that they put a lot of pressure on their children to get good grades. Describe bullying, etc.
7) Well, and, finally, the least popular rating on schooldigger.
I like this site because it is the most convenient way to view academic results. The position of the school in the overall ranking throughout the state is also visible: 1451 places out of all 2118 Elementary schools in all of Florida. Badly.
Apparently, the realtor in this case tried to mislead.
Indeed, at the address: "4540 Messina Dr, Lake Mary, FL 32746" there is a small chance of getting into a good Lake Mary Elementary School, but a much higher chance of being in a bad Wicklow Elementary.
School Digger is also interesting because it allows you to compare different counties and districts, sorting them by school ratings. Find the best schools in different sectors, etc.
With it, you can select several ZIPs for which you can already look for rent or sale on Zillow or on .
For example, you can see the ranking of school districts across Florida:
Unfortunately, there is no universal solution. You always have to make compromises.
Happy moving and searching!
Source: habr.com