5 Metrics For Choosing A College

A long summer break has been a fixture of the schedule in most private schools seemingly forever. Three months or more offers plenty of time for a wide range of activities for every age group. Here are some of the options available.

Sports camps

Many private schools rent out their facilities to outside organizations which run sports camps. The last time I checked, there seemed to me to be a camp available for almost any sport you could imagine. And they were offered at various age levels too.

Tech summer sessions

Ages ago we called these computer camps. Nowadays they are called tech camps. They will teach your daughter robotics, code, game development, design and much more. IDTech and Emagination Tech camps are just two of the commercial companies offering tech courses on college campuses here in the United States and abroad.

This video offers a peak at an IDTech summer tech camp.

Your local community college probably has tech camps too. Wake Tech in my area has fifteen tech camp options including such popular offerings as drones, video game design and more. Our sister site, Community College Review has a powerful search tool which will help you find a community college near you.

Day and overnight camps for children with special needs

Your child attends a school for children with special needs. What will

We parents worry a lot, don't we? From the time of your baby's first kick in the womb to her graduation from college, her marriage, and the birth of her own children, we just never stop worrying, do we? Now, of course, I don't mean worrying in a negative sense. I use worry to express that parental awareness or sixth sense which we parents remarkably seem to develop from the time we first hold our child in our arms. Worrying goes with parenting. But let's make it informed worrying. That's why organizations such as The National Association For Gifted Children are so important. This video discusses the parenting of gifted children.

As you begin to suspect that your child might be gifted, take time to review the information contained on an authoritative website such as the NAGC's. Ruthlessly filter information which you see on television, hear on talk shows or read in social media.

So what makes a child gifted? The NAGC lists the following common characteristics of gifted children:

• Unusual alertness, even in infancy
• Rapid learner; puts thoughts together quickly
• Excellent memory
• Unusually large vocabulary and complex sentence structure for age
• Advanced comprehension of word nuances, metaphors and abstract ideas
• Enjoys solving problems, especially with numbers and puzzles
• Often self-taught reading and writing skills as preschooler
• Deep, intense feelings and reactions
• Highly sensitive
• Thinking is abstract, complex, logical, and insightful
• Idealism and sense of justice at early age
• Concern with social

Signs that your school might be failing don't suddenly appear all at once like a flashing neon sign. Instead, they appear gradually over weeks, months, and years. I am targeting small private schools with these remarks and suggestions with the hope that you will see telltale signs of concern long before they become major troubles.

As you and your board of trustees review the list which I have set out below, I would suggest scoring each item on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the low end, and 10 the top. So, for example, as you look at your enrolment data for the past 5 years, if the trend shows a deterioration in enrolment, you would score that item 5 or less. And so on. Then tackle the items on the list which need the most attention.

The following video discusses signs that a business is in trouble. Many of these will apply to a private school which is, after all, a business.

Low enrollment

Let's start with enrollment. Filling your school's seats is essential for balancing your budget. If you are having trouble doing that, then you need to find out why you are not able to fill all your seats. If you are a seasoned enrolment professional or have one on your board, then seek his advice and follow it. Enrollment professionals will look at a host of things that

According to Wikipedia.org, "School choice is a term for K–12 public education options in the United States, describing a wide array of programs offering students and their families alternatives to publicly provided schools, to which the location of their family residence generally assigns students." Vouchers have been in the headlines for almost thirty years. So, this is not a new issue, although the media attention sometimes implies that vouchers are a new idea. A timeline is helpful when dealing with a controversial issue such as school vouchers. But before we do that, what are vouchers?

EdChoice describes vouchers as:

"School vouchers give parents the freedom to choose a private school for their children, using all or part of the public funding set aside for their children’s education. Under such a program, funds typically spent by a school district would be allocated to a participating family in the form of a voucher to pay partial or full tuition for their child’s private school, including both religious and non-religious options."

You will hear vouchers called various names, such as parental choice, education grants, scholarships, and tuition grants, to list but a few of the names you will encounter for vouchers.15 states and the District of Columbia currently offer 26 voucher programs. School Voucher Laws State-by-State Comparison offers a useful table comparing the voucher programs offered in states that have them.

Why are vouchers controversial?

Now that you have access to