Six Steps to a Successful Preschool Choice

Step 1: Get Started

You already know how important preschool is, and that's the most important part of getting started. Research shows you can significantly improve your child's personal life and later academic performance by choosing the right preschool, so you have plenty of reasons to give it your best effort. When you consider a preschool, you need to assess both its quality (how good is it at the things every child needs) and its fit with your own child and family's particular needs. Just think: Great Preschool, Great Fit!?

Step 2: Solve the Great Fit Puzzle

Quality is intriguing, but let's start in more familiar territory: your child and family. The goal of this step is to help you ensure that the preschool you choose fits the particular needs of your own child and family, just like in our Great Fit Triangle below.

Fit Factor #1: What Your Child Learns Needs in this category affect the content and level of difficulty a preschool should offer your child. Your child's capabilities and interests in various developmental areas may affect how well a preschool fits your child. Your family's values about what children should learn in preschool and your long-term aspirations for your child also may affect your choice of preschools.

Fit Factor #2: How Your Child Learns Needs in this category affect how a preschool should teach and interact with your child. These include various characteristics of your child affecting how your child learns best. Your family's values about discipline and teaching methods may also affect a preschool's fit with your needs.

Fit Factor #3: Social Issues These are your child & family needs and preferences for a social community where you and your child feel connected to other people, through friendships, school involvement and common values.

Fit Factor #4: Practical Matters These are your child & family logistical needs and practical constraints, such as scheduling, child care, balancing your multiple children's needs, and money.

Chapter 3 in this guide helps you pinpoint your top child and family needs. Focusing on a few of your highest priority needs is critical for narrowing your search and choosing a preschool that's a Great Fit.

As you identify your child's and family's most pressing preschool needs, you'll want to know what a preschool should offer to meet those needs. A helpful table at the end of each section of Chapter 3 tells you what a preschool should offer for each common child and family need. The Personalized Great Fit Checklist on page 80 will help you record what you learn about the fit of each preschool you consider.

For a Great Fit, you should expect a lot from a preschool when it comes to meeting your highest priority needs, especially those that your family cannot address outside of preschool.

Step 3: Learn about Truly Great Preschools

After you determine what a preschool should offer to fit your child and family's particular needs, it's time to learn about preschool quality, or truly Great Preschools. In great preschools, children of all types and abilities learn dramatically more in critical developmental areas than similar children in other preschools. Preschool research tells us what developmental content is essential for all children to be successful in later schooling and life. Decades of research about preschools and other schools where children learn the most tells us what kind of process schools use to ensure high levels of learning of desired content, whether social, emotional, physical or cognitive/academic. A bonus: great preschools are more likely than others to meet both your child's changing fit needs in core developmental areas and to meet the needs of your multiple children.

Repeated, unbiased research over thirty years has shown that great schools adhere to seven principles, which we call the Great Preschool Quality Factors:

#1: Clear Mission Guiding School Activities means everyone in the preschool understands the preschool's goals and how to implement them every day.
#2: High Expectations for All Students means all children are expected and helped to meet age-appropriate developmental goals essential to long-term success. But age is no ceiling: developmental goals are raised for individual children as soon as they are ready, beyond what is typical? for same age children. More advanced materials and activities are deployed to advance children's learning, even when it feels like just playing? to the child.
#3: Monitoring Progress and Adjusting Teaching means teachers assess individual developmental progress often and change teaching approaches and materials to ensure that every child continues to develop.
#4: Focus on Effective Learning Tasks means that the preschool spends significant time on activities proven to induce continued learning and development in critical areas. Critical developmental areas for all children in preschool include at least cognitive (e.g., literacy, number concepts, and thinking skills), social, emotional/behavioral, and physical (including fine motor and large/gross motor). Teachers bond emotionally with children and use those bonds to make the most of learning in all important areas.
#5 : Home-School Connection means you know what your child's preschool is doing, how well your child is developing, and how to play your part in your child's development.
#6 : Safe and Orderly Environment means children are safe and can focus on learning. #7 : Strong Iinstructional Leadership means the school leader ensures consistent excellence across classrooms in Great Preschool Quality Factors #1 6.

Chapter 4 in this guide walks you through the critical aspects of each Great Preschool Quality Factor in more detail. You'll learn exactly what to ask and what to look for to determine each preschool's quality strengths and weaknesses. The Great Preschool Quality Checklist on page 81 and 82 will help you record preschool quality indicators at preschools you consider. Use The Savvy Source's side by side comparison tool on TheSavvySource.com to narrow your potential preschools based on quality indicators and to help make your final decisions; see Chapter 5 starting on page 65 in this guide for more.

Step 4: Investigate Preschools

Consider high-potential preschools: start with preschools included on TheSavvySource.com. Also look for articles in local newspapers and magazines. Contact your local child care resource center. Ask other parents who live near you, work near you and have child and family needs that may be similar to yours. Focus on preschools that appear to meet your Great Preschoo/p>

Screen out schools that are obviously a poor fit for your high priority needs or that clearly lack the key elements of preschool quality. Start with information on TheSavvySource.com. Then gather more about preschools remaining on your list. Visit websites, tour the preschools, interview preschool directors and teachers, and talk to parents of children with needs similar to your own child's.

To get the best results when visiting preschools to gather information, be polite, listen well, be firm to get the information you need, and be genuine about your high priority needs and quality concerns.

Focus on your top few questions that aren't already addressed in The Savvy Source's comprehensive preschool profiles. The interview sheet provided in this guide on page 83 can help you feel calmer about interviews with preschool directors, teachers and other parents.
Keep track of what you learn by copying and completing your one-page Personalized Great Fit Checklist on page 80 and a Great Preschool Quality Checklist on page 81 and 82 for each preschool.

Step 5: Make Your Choice, Make It Happen

Compare preschools point-by-point on quality and fit. Use these tools to help:

• The Savvy Source's school comparison matrix on TheSavvySource.com, which shows side by side preschool comparisons. Just as you used this to narrow your search, now you can use it to help make final decisions among schools.
• Your Preschool Comparison Worksheet on page 84 and 85 here.

Ask yourself: Which preschools best meet high priority needs you really can't meet outside of preschool? Chapters 3 6 will help you think about this.

Rank your preschool options and do all you can to secure a slot for your child. If you are applying to a selective preschool, make sure that your application or accompanying letter clearly describes a) the preschool's quality strengths that you recognize and appreciate and b) why the preschool is the best fit for your child and family needs. Be sure to follow prescribed admission steps and meet all deadlines. See our discussions about admissions on pages 17, 75 and 87 for more help.

Step 6: Make the Most of It

No preschool is perfect. Even the best must work constantly to improve. You may find that you have limited options in your area, your child does not get in to your favorite preschool, or your chosen preschool is not perfect in quality and fit. Knowing a preschool's strengths and weaknesses will help you work better with your child's teachers and craft the right experiences for your child outside of preschool. See the Preschool Parenting Planner on page 86 to focus non-school time on what matters most, reducing overload for your child and family. You also can help improve your child's preschool in all the right ways by focusing on its strengths and weaknesses in quality and fit!