School Review & Community Guidelines

School reviews help parents find the right school for their child. When you write a review of your child’s school, you’re offering other parents something that data can’t — your personal experience as a member of that community. Plus, it’s a great way to show your gratitude for your school’s greatness (and offer feedback on where they might improve).

Sharing your experience

School reviews are a way for parents, teachers, students, and caregivers who have had recent, direct experience with a school to share its strengths and weaknesses. Sharing your honest opinions will help other parents make more informed decisions about which school is best for their child.

To ensure your review is helpful to as many parents as possible, we ask that you follow our review and community guidelines, and check out our tips for writing an effective review.

Review moderation policies

At this time, we allow one review per person, per school.

GreatSchools publishes all reviews that adhere to our guidelines. That includes a wide range of positive, lukewarm, and negative reviews. In most cases, an otherwise acceptable review will contain just one name, word, or sentence that violates one of our guidelines and results in the review not appearing on our site. To ensure your review is posted, please read through these guidelines carefully.

To ensure high-quality school reviews on GreatSchools.org, we employ both automated and manual moderation systems. Due to the volume of reviews we receive, we are not able to read them all. Instead, we rely on you to flag reviews that do not meet our guidelines.

Please keep in mind that while community members are responsible for the content of their posts, we reserve the right to remove any review that does not meet our guidelines or that we deem inappropriate or offensive.

Student reviews
All reviews submitted by students must be read in advance by a moderator and are posted if they meet our guidelines. Please be patient as this may take a few days.

Frequently asked questions

I’m a principal and I see inaccurate and/or unfavorable reviews on my school profile. Can you remove them for me?
GreatSchools will only remove a review if it violates our school review guidelines and/or our community guidelines. We do not remove reviews because they are critical or simply because a school asks us to do so. Principals and school administrators can share their perspective by signing up for a School Account. Writing a School Leader review is a great way to set the record straight and share all the best aspects of your school with families who use GreatSchools. We also encourage school leaders to respond to reviews to clarify misconceptions or to share additional information. For more information on responding to reviews, visit here.

It seems like you only post positive reviews. Do you post any negative reviews?
Yes, we do! GreatSchools publishes all reviews that adhere to our guidelines. That includes a wide range of positive, lukewarm, and negative reviews. In most cases, an otherwise acceptable review will contain just one name, word, or sentence that violates one of our guidelines — and still we must remove it. This also happens with positive reviews, though less frequently, of course. We understand that not all experiences are good ones, so please help us help you get your point of view published by stating your opinion constructively and by adhering to our guidelines.

How do I flag a review?
To report a review to our moderation team, click the blue “report” link below the review. Tell us how the review violates our guidelines and click submit.

Will I hear back from you after I report a review?
Thank you for taking the time to report a review! We really do rely on our responsible community members to alert us to a problem. Unfortunately, due to the volume of requests, we are not able to reply to everyone who reports a review. If you reported a review that remains posted, it means our moderators have determined that it is in line with our guidelines and will remain on the site.

Why did my review get deleted?
The most common reason a review is removed is because the reviewer submits a new review for the same school. In that case, the new review will replace the old review. However, if you wrote a school review and it has not been published, please read our guidelines and write another review. If you believe your review meets our guidelines and you have submitted it twice and it has been more than 24 hours, please contact us for help. Thank you!

Can I use names in my review?
We allow reviews that use names of public figures, like a school’s principal or leader, and will allow positive reviews to post that name teachers and staff.

Do you edit reviews?
No. Reviews are never edited by our staff. Not even to correct typos. However, you can always change your own review. Just submit a new review using the same email address and your new review will replace your old review.

How can I edit or update my existing school review?
If you’ve written a review but would like to change it, you may submit a new review which will overwrite the review you previously submitted.

Why aren’t there more current reviews?
We post reviews in the order in which we receive them, with the newest reviews appearing at the top. We love new reviews and know that the more recent they are the more helpful they are to parents. If your school’s reviews are out of date, please encourage your peers to post new reviews.

Community guidelines

When you post on GreatSchools.org, you are agreeing to abide by the community guidelines described below. Please read the following carefully before writing a school review and/or commenting on our articles.

Privacy

Your privacy is important to us. We will not share your name or email address with anyone except as otherwise described in our Privacy Policy.

Please review our terms of use for more information. If you still have questions, please contact us.