Young families looking to buy homes sometimes shy away fromurban neighborhoods in fear of uncertainties about public school options. Looking for quality schools is a top priorityfor most parents and Denver makes this process relatively painless. First every Colorado resident should knowthat you can choice into any public school in Colorado regardless of whatdistrict you live in. Each district hasits own lottery process so check their website for specific information.
In the past ten yearsDenver Public Schools has been open to a variety of schools by creating magnetprograms, charter schools and alternative schools. DPS prints a parent guide http://parentguide.dpsk12.org/that outlines all the choices, process and gives steps to choosing the bestschool to fit your child's needs.
Check out the neighborhood school where you want tolive. Test scores are not the holy grailof school quality, in 2009 The Colorado Department of Education started using a"growth model" to show how much children were growing in a schoolyear. This allowed parents anothermeasure by which to look at how many children are growing academically and howmuch their academic skills are growing in a given year. Often times the highest performing schoolsare schools in very high income areas where parents give a lot of time andmoney to the school, they invest in additional tutoring for their kids and theymake sure their children have every academic opportunity available to them,these outside forces have little to do with actual instruction in classroomsthey have to do with outside influences.The growth model gives the public an idea of what is going on in theschool.
Quality education is more than test scores it is alsodiversity, types of programs, languages, arts, sports. The Piton Foundation http://www.piton.org/SchoolFactshas a wonderful resource for people researching schools that covers,demographics, Colorado growth measures, test scores and more to give parents aninvaluable resource to look at what quality schools are in their area.
Lastly one great way to improve property value is to improvethe quality of schools in your neighborhood, get involved in the PTO, helpfundraising, learn about what is going well at your neighborhood school andspread the news, encourage your neighbors to send their children to the localschool, learn what is going on in the school board related to bringing qualityprograms to your school.
By Dawn Nudell Richardson
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