Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! When I founded GreatSchools.net almost eight years ago, before the word “blog” was invented, I had no idea that our tiny little Web site would grow into the nation’s leading source of information for K-12 schools. Well, here we are! I hope you find GreatSchools.net to be a useful resource for you.

This blog opens a new chapter in the GreatSchools journey for me. Over the past eight years, I’ve learned a lot about education and schools, and I continue to learn as much as I can every day. And now, I have two new "teachers:" my 4- and 6-year-old daughters.

My goal with this blog is to share some of what I am learning and to raise questions that I hope will provoke your thinking. I’ll focus on the questions and interests that motivated me to start GreatSchools.net in the first place: What is a great school? How can a parent tell if they have one? What can parents do to improve schools? What's a parent to think about the many education issues and controversies that surround us? How can we use our knowledge and power to improve our children's schools?

Indeed, we parents and community members have more power to influence educational outcomes and schools than we sometimes realize. States play a major role in setting education policy and the Federal government has weighed in with the No Child Left Behind Act. Yet, local schools and districts are still responsible for running schools, and parents have a lot of influence over schools and districts.

We parents act as our children's first (and most important!) teachers, set expectations for what kind of educational outcomes we expect our schools to produce, and provide the support that schools need to succeed. Along with local community leaders, we are responsible for the local political culture that governs the schools — typically through the elected school board.

In other words, when it comes to schools and the education of children, we parents are (or should be!) the number one players. We have the most at stake, and we have the most power to influence the outcomes for our children.

With that in mind, I'll be challenging you to think broadly about how we work together to improve schools and educational outcomes in our communities. I hope you'll share your own ideas along the way. Together we can make a difference in the lives of our children and all children in our communities!