With my oldest child a high school senior and two other children in middle and high school, colleges are often discussed in our home. When a child asks "is X a good school?", I don't know how to answer that question other than to say how prestigious the school is, but prestige is largely a measure of selectivity (inputs) rather than value added.
So how do you try to answer the question of which colleges have good teaching? We have been on some college tours. Student guides talk about the student-faculty ratio and average class size and about opportunities for research. A few have shared stories of professors who provided individual assistance when they reached out. I wonder how you get aggregate information about teaching quality, given that it will vary within a school and department.
