Criteria Explained - How We Made Our Rubric

So yes, I'm a bit of a geek, but here is a list of what was most important to us in this search and what, specifically we were looking for. There are three categories;

1)Building, meaning the school itself and how things are set up. We saw a school where all of the toys were up on shelves - absolutely nothing at child level which made us wonder how much choice and free access the children have. After that we added that to the rubric.

2) People, meaning the people who work and volunteer with the kids as well as any support staff or office personnel (we figured we'd be dealing with them enough to warrant paying attention and read a few reviews about schools who lost payments and things like that). We were also looking at how they engaged with E on the visit, and the diversity of the students as far as we could see while we were there.

3) Program, meaning what the students do there including extras like music lessons or dance classes and field trips. This is also where we took any special philosophy the school claimed to have and rated whether or not they seemed to stick with it.

4) Policy, meaning how they handle things like pricing, meals and potty training.

BUILDING
Brightness - 4
Ambiance - 5
Access to Toys - 3
Playground - 3

PEOPLE
Engagement with E - 2
Friendliness - 3
Professionalism - 4
Diversity - 3

PROGRAM
Access to Nature - 5
Specialness - 3
Enrichment - 2
Philosophy/Curriculum - 4

POLICY
Meals - 2
Price - 2
Potty Training - 2

The number next to each represents the weight we assigned to that quality from 1-5 with 1 being less important to us and 5 being more. It would be crazy to just give a number to each of these qualities when some are clearly more important to us than others. For example, we have a big yard and E spends a lot of time outside everyday. We wanted her to go to a preschool that let her play outside a lot so that she wouldn't feel caged in. Weighing each quality helped us to score the schools based on the things that were most important to us. When we visited a school we gave each quality a 1-5 with 1 being terrible or non-existent and 5 being wonderful or ideal. Then we multiplied that number by the weight to get a final score. It's a little crazy and far from perfect but this is how we did it.

So for example Little Owl Preschool which I've already mentioned we loved has an open door policy. The kids can pretty much choose to go inside or outside whenever they want. We gave them a 5 in Access to Nature and so they ended up with a score of 25 in that quality. On the other hand they are WAY above our price range so we gave them 1 on price for a score of 2. When all of their numbers are added up, it reflects how they did in the qualities that are most important. If you adopt this model (and I understand that most sane people will not) you'll have to decide which qualities are most important to you.

Still with me? I told you I was nuts. I'll post the complete rubric with each school's scores once I've reviewed them each individually on here. Next post will start the reviews.