Find Out What Families Look For When Choosing A School

We asked families, ‘How do you find your school fit?’ Here’s what they said.

Through GreatPhillySchools, Elevate 215’s family-focused information initiative, we strive to learn about the needs of families as they navigate the school selection process, and continuously adapt our resources to better support them. We do this by gathering direct feedback from families and staying up-to-date on the ever-changing education landscape.

We conducted interviews at the 2024 K-12 Philly School Fair to better understand what families value most when choosing a school, and what resources were most impactful. Here’s what we learned:

Why did you attend the K-12 Philly School Fair?

• “There’s so many choices, and so many schools, and they have so many different requirements. It’s a little overwhelming. My son is actually in seventh grade, so we thought we should just check this out to get a lay of the land and see what’s out there so we’re prepared next year when we actually do start thinking about high school.”
• “My kid is going into kindergarten, so we wanted to get a broader horizon and see what was going on with other schools that we could possibly get into without just being in our zip code, or just in our specific area.”
• “We’re here to discover all of the high schools that Philly has to offer. We have a seventh grader and a sixth grader, so we’re coming in before all the pressure is on so that we can try to understand better what the schools are.”

What is the most helpful resource/information you received at the Fair?

• “A lot of the schools, they gave us a realistic approach from the students, not just from adults that work at the school, so we get to see what students feel the school is like. We get to see different programs and extracurriculars that the students are [enrolled] in, so that’s really nice.”
• “I appreciate [schools] having the brochures with school criteria on the front; that was really helpful. You can see, hey, you have to have 90% attendance, or you can have all As, or you have to have two years of a language. And seeing that [compared to] other schools that didn’t have that information was helpful as well.”
• “I think the students’ excitement, and their clarity about why they’re at the school, what’s exciting about the school, what’s enriching and nourishing for them was probably the most beneficial.”

Did you receive the information you needed at the Fair?

• “Absolutely, I have tons of information now that I have to go home and sift through and put on my spreadsheet. I think it was a very well put-together event, lots of information, lots of schools here, for sure.”
• “Absolutely! You can go to the individual [school] websites and find a lot of the information, but just to gather it in a really concise manner has been really helpful. We’re gonna go through it when we get home and sort it all out.”

Here’s a video of the interviews: 

These insights capture just a fraction of the journeys experienced by the 6,000 families who attended the 2024 K-12 Philly School Fair to explore over 200 schools, highlighting the fair’s value in helping families make informed choices about their K-12 options during selection season.

We will be taking action in the coming months to refine our resources and family-outreach campaigns based on this feedback. For anyone interested in staying up-to-date on important education information, follow GreatPhillySchools on Instagram and Facebook, and sign up for the newsletter.