It is very important that you use your resourses. Do you have any friends or family where you are thinking of buying your home? Do the kids have any extra curricular activities where you are thinking of buying (if so where do their friends attend)? If it is because of your jobs where do your co-workers send their kids? The second thing you need to do is physically go to the school. Do this during school hours because you can see who attends the school. Some schools even have a web site which gives an overview but to me it doesn't paint a true picture unless you actually see what is going on. Do the staff seem happy? Do you feel tension? Do the kids look happy? See if you can sit in a class and watch a teacher at work. How do the kids react? Is the teacher teaching a whole class or respecting individual needs of kids. Every kid is different. Don't forget some schools use district guidelines (if you live over off of block C your kid will go to school D. If you live over off of block F your kid will go to school E. The school may allow inter district transfers but check with the district office not the school site. There are forms to fill out (at least for us).

Also, talk to your realtor. He/she should have some inside information on the schools in your district.

Ask around, visit some schools - know what you want, is is strictly high test scores - what you will find is that the schools with the highest test scores tend to correlate with the more affluent neighborhoods - and there is very little diversity. If you want a school with more diversity then skip by the scores and look at the make-up of the student populations first and look for improvement in test scores over the last few years - not just an overall rank for last year. Go visit the schools you are most interested in. Being a parent in a very diverse school, that does not get the best greatschools ranking, I am telling you - I would not send my kids anywhere else - because of the racial and financial diversity in our school - our teachers don't just teach they advocate for the students - they work with all students to improve themselves - they work on character education - it is a great environment and my children have friends of all kinds of backgrounds. There are many schools out there like this but they tend to get overlooked when people, especially those making a long distance move, look at a site like this one and see a 4 - when the affluent white district next to it posts 9s.

Have you tried using Greatschools "Find a School" feature on the green menu bar near the top of this page? You can enter a location and grade level, and see what schools are in the area. Public ones are rated from 1 (low) to 10 (highest) based on how their students performed on the latest statewide testing. If you click on individual school names in blue, you can find out more details about each school. Once you identify schools you'd like, then you might search the real estate listings to find a home in those attendance areas.