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Dayton families to receive guide that will help them choose the right school
'School Chooser Guide,' which should arrive this month, will profile 83 area public, private and charter schools.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
DAYTON — About 17,000 city families with school-age children will receive a detailed guide to 83 local public, private and charter schools this month.
This is the second year for the School Chooser Guide, a joint project of the University of Dayton, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and greatschools.net. The guidebook this year added 21 schools, including private schools outside the city limits for the first time.
Extras
Beyond basic information, such as each school's address, phone number and principal's name, the guide also includes information about academic philosophy, programs, after-school offerings and tests scores.
All schools in the guide shared test scores except for the city's three Catholic high school — Chaminade-Julienne, Alter and Carroll. All three declined to share test scores.
Dayton's charter school movement has blossomed since 1998 — the city now ranks second in the nation for the percentage of kids attending charters. Those new schools, added to an already robust private school sector, prompted a need to help parents maneuver through a myriad of education choices.
The chooser is designed to help parents make the right choice the first time.
"I've talked with several parents who told me they made choices and switches because of being unhappy — in all sectors," said Andria Perkins, greatschools.net's outreach manager in Dayton. "They go private to charter, public to charter, private to public and back. It's a busy system. Parent empowerment is part of the process of making the student's experience better."
The project costs about $200,000 a year, and organizers hope to keep expanding it to add more area schools. Greatschools.net is a Web-based nonprofit with more than 100,000 school profiles online.
Parents also get school choosing tools in the guide, such as worksheets for determining their own priorities, checklists for school visits and a system for ranking schools based on each family's needs and desires.
The effort will include parent workshops coming soon. For more information, call 937-229-2637 or e-mail daytonschool
chooser@greatschools.net.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2485 or selliott@DaytonDailyNews.com.
