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When I was a kid, “school shopping” meant buying notebooks, pencils, and erasers. It certainly didn’t mean “shopping for a school.” Such an idea was not part of our vocabulary, it wasn’t thought of, and it was certainly not an option. Growing up in Rapid City, you attended the school that was closest to your house. Period. End of story.

Times have changed.

My wife and I recently went school shopping for our daughter, London, who will enter 4th grade next year. Beginning with preschool, she has only known one school, Children’s House Montessori. The Montessori system has worked wonders, but we knew the day would come when London would need to make the switch to a more conventional school. That day arrived a bit sooner than we were hoping.

Our first surprise was that if we were going to send London to a private school next fall, the deadline for applying was as early as Jan 31. This caught us a bit by surprise in mid-January, meaning we had two weeks to make our decision. The serious shopping was on!

We visited five possible schools and compared curriculums, facilities, and staff. We also requested from each school the results of the Stanford Test which is given every March. There are certainly flaws with just basing a decision on the test results. (For example, one school can teach to the test, while another may not.) Still, we felt it would give us the best “apples to apples” comparison of the academic program of each school.

Our second surprise was how close four of the five schools ranked in the Stanford tests. I’ve had a belief that private schools academically outshine public schools. While I believe that is true when comparing the averages of all public schools, it certainly wasn’t the case here. There was very little discernable difference between the one public school and three of the four private schools.

Because the elementary schools were so similar, we decided to compare middle schools and base our choice on the middle school we would choose for London. Once again, we were surprised at how close the one public middle school’s scores were in comparison with the two private schools. Using the Stanford Test scores of the middle schools to break our elementary dilemma didn’t work.

But, to be complete, our next step was to look at high schools. Here there was a wider margin in test scores, but the gap was still not enough to make those scores a deciding factor.

After all our comparisons, we finally made a decision based on a wide range of factors. We gathered as much information as we could about such exterior factors as test scores, programs, class sizes, and tuition costs. We also found out as much as possible about the less tangible aspects of each school: its relationship with students and parents, its philosophy, and its overall “feel.”

What this process ultimately came down to was choosing a school with a philosophy and approach we thought would best meet our daughter’s needs. Expanding our search beyond the elementary level to middle and high schools gave us some crucial information. We realized we were selecting, not just an elementary school, but a school system. We also, in all probability, were selecting a school for our son as well as our daughter.

Will this prove to be the “perfect” school? Only time will tell. We do know that we made our decision as carefully and consciously as we could. Because of that, we’re satisfied that we made a choice that will be a good one for our family.