Hi Bostontransfer,
I'm a fellow member from the baystate - I live on the North Shore in a small suburban community.

Are you planning to stay in Eastern Massachusetts? School choice most often refers to situations where one school in a district may be failing or underperforming, and under NCLB, residents have the option to choose to send their kids to a school other than the failing school.

Here is a link from the Mass DOE website that might provide you with better information. www.doe.mass.edu/nclb/choice.html

Many districts in MA are so small, that even if a school is underperforming, school choice would not apply - there may only be one school from which to choose!

If you are trying to descern the "best" school districts, you can check out the DOE website to look at MCAS scores. In addtion, Boston magazine recently ran an article about the top districts. Beyond test scores, you may want to consider things like teacher turnover, spending per student, teacher/student ratios, course offerings etc.

Even though you are looking at elementary schools, it is important to look at the quality of HS schools - often times the quality of the HS is heavily influenced by the elementary feeder schools.

Finally - consider whether or not having a regional vs a town district is important to you.

michellea,

Thanks for the reply. Actually, I'm moving from Boston to California. I guess my Handle name is a little confusing. Perhaps I should change that!

We're actually moving to the San Diego area just north of the city. I had done a little research on the area and saw some posts about "choice" schools. Thanks for your reply.

Best of luck with your move. I don't know much about the schools in San Diago, but I am sure you will find more pleasant weather.

okay... coming from a "boston mom" I can tell you what it means. The choice thing is the schools that YOU want your child to go to ... if the district cant' get your kids into your "choice" schools then they put them where they can.

Oh boy, this is my first posting and I hate it to be a correction! Being a former school choice parent of 6 yrs, I need to explain what the Mass DOE had set up back in 1993. As part of the Massachusetts movement to improve education in the state, the DOE had created a mechanism in 1994 (?)where a school that has space could accept students who may want to enter that district and recoup tuitions from the sending towns. Sometimes, the decision made by families that they may want to go to another district may simply be for a sport that their own public school does not offer, but another school who chooses to participate in this school choice program does. Hence, the receiving town would get the tuition, and here is an important point for the athelete, if they are looking to participate in a high school level sport that same year, will need to obtain waivers from their hometown superintendent. Most superintendants would give it. The tuition has not been upped since 1994 and thus continued participation have ended in some districts, but they have to keep the students that they do have until they either leave the school system or graduate. With these times of tight budgets, the school choice money would be welcomed.

I don't know much about the NCLB act for underperforming schools and I don't know what options there would be- those vouchers have to be quite limited!

got the answer