Originally Posted by nene

As a person who moved quite a bit for Uncle Sam during my family's early formative years, usually across country and in the days before the internet, I will let you know that asking people about their school district is about like asking them about a "good church" in the area. Here are three ideas of advice:

1. Inevitably you will get the standard, "our school/church is great, but that one down the street/county line/ across the city is bad". People tend to validate their own choices and poopoo the others, it's human nature.

2. Even crappy schools can have amazing teachers and "amazing" schools can have crappy teachers. Much of it is luck of the draw. Best you can do is actually seek out the leadership of the school, because they often set the tone of the whole school. Some hold people accountable, some phone it in on glide slope to retirement. Your experience vs someone else's at the same school could be wildly different.

3. Almost all schools (public and private) need substitute teachers and as long as you can get a background check you will be eagerly accepted into any schools fold of subs. When my kids were older I got "certified" (usually some fingerprints and a copy of college transcript) to sub at any middle and upper school my kids were considering. Subbing at a school for just a couple of days you learn volumes as to what goes on inside that school, and after doing it in many different schools, you get the sense that there are wildly different environments that schools operate in. Some closer to "free range", some closer to "juvenile detention". Sad part is I was shocked by the amount of apathy exhibited by some teachers and students alike. It truly starts in the middle school years where the students and system start separating students into those there to learn and those who are there for other reasons. Of course this divide grows as the grades tick by as students are continually surrounded by other achievers or others, whereas you'll see high schools were some can barely read, and others are scoring perfect SAT's.

Best of luck in your search. Obviously no two students are the same. Some mature later, some are self motivated, some come from very challenging backgrounds where even coming to school is a challenge. Subbing is a periscope into the heart of the school though, seeing how the school leadership is involved and more than a few times I was surprised by how well run some "well known lesser" schools were and how dismal some "high achieving" were being run. It almost always boiled down to the leadership at the top of the school, like in your airplane, they set the tone and expectations by their involvement and behavior and teachers notice and generally respond.