School reviews are a powerful way for parents, teachers, students, and caregivers who have had recent experiences with a school to share the strengths and weaknesses they have observed. Reviews give other parents valuable insights that help them go beyond the numbers to get a feel for a school’s culture and personality.
When paired with data-based ratings, GreatSchools‘ reviews help parents make the best choice for their child. We encourage your participation and seek your insight about the schools your child has attended to help other parents make wise decisions.
Tips for a useful review
When writing a review:
• Try to answer the questions you would ask.
• Be balanced — note a positive along with a negative.
• Telling a personal story is great, but remember to keep it relevant, accurate — avoid the best ever and worst ever and hyperbole. Also, keep it fairly brief.
• Please turn on spell check (and grammar check). You lose credibility as a critic of the school’s language arts program when you display poor language arts skills!
Our guidelines
Here are some guidelines for making the most helpful reviews. Violating any of these guidelines can result in your review being removed from GreatSchools.
• Show respect: Let’s think of the Golden Rule here. Please be civil and thoughtful in your review. This is not a space for personal attacks.
• Focus on quality: The most helpful reviews provide information about the overall quality of a school, such as observations about school leadership, school facilities, teacher quality, parent involvement, and programs offered (or lack thereof).
• Safety always: Safety is important to all of us, especially when it comes to our children. Threats against a school, its staff, or its student body are unacceptable. If you are concerned about or know of illegal and/or criminal activity, please report it to the proper authorities. This is not the place to report it.
• Be honest and keep it current: Please do not post outdated information. We prefer reviews from:
• parents whose children have a recent, direct experience with the school;
• students (13 or older) who attend the school; and
• current or recent teachers, staff, and volunteers at the school.
• One review per person for each review topic: At this time, we allow one review per person, per school, for each review topic. (An “overall” review is one topic; other review topics include honesty, teachers, respect, etc.)
No-no’s in a review
The presence of any of these will result in your review being deleted.
• Threats against a school, its staff, or its student body are unacceptable. These will also be reported to authorities.
• Name-calling,
• Obscenities,
• Hateful, inflammatory, or otherwise inappropriate language.
Please visit our review guidelines page to find out more, including information about moderation policies. Also frequently asked questions are answered here.
