School Choice for Kids Website

I have been remiss in not blogging about this sooner, but many of my readers probably aren’t aware of an innovative new website created by the Independence Institute (full disclosure: where I work), a website created and maintained in part by a lot of intensive labor from my own Mrs. Virtus.

If you are a parent of school-age children in Colorado, nor if you care at all about education reform, please pay attention. You can watch this 28-minute video recently aired on Colorado public television to learn more about the School Choice for Kids website (and/or read about some of the site’s features below):

Add to My Profile | More Videos

The School Choice for Kids site contains significant information about every public school in Colorado – including charters, options, magnets, etc. – and has a mapping feature that allows parents to search for schools, based on any of 47 different categories, within selected distances of a given address. Need to find a Montessori school within 5 miles of home? Need to find a school with at-risk or gifted programs within 10 miles of your work? There are many possibilities here, and the best way to get a sense of them is to give the site a quick test-spin yourself.

But there’s more to the School Choice for Kids site, including all the helpful information to guide Colorado families through the sometimes bureaucratic open enrollment process and a parent-friendly glossary of common “eduspeak” terms they may encounter along the way. There are also links to thorough and detailed information on the No Child Left Behind law, the state’s public school report cards, private school scholarship organizations, homeschooling resources, and more.

The School Choice for Kids site is user-friendly and colorful, and currently available both in English and in Spanish. (Given the time and resources, we would be glad to translate it into other languages useful to certain populations living in Colorado, too.) This one-stop shop for finding schools in Colorado is constantly being updated and improved with the best available information and accessibility.

I invite you to check it out, test the features, share your feedback, and tell your friends!