Our experience has been that it's often times not so much the educational philosophy that a school follows, what's important is just this - that it's "done well". I'd talk to as many other parents at the schools your looking at and consider their feedback, then make the decision based on my child's personality. The final choice might not be the most convenient choice - we faced that this year with my ds' school, but ultimately it was actually much more convenient than we'd anticipated - simply because the things that *we'd* seen as not convenient (drive and tuition cost) were things we could deal with, and we were blessed with a convenience that we hadn't realized would make life easier - ds loves his new school and the academics are much better suited to him - so spending the extra time driving etc paid off in terms of significantly lightening the load of stress over his previous school situation that was taking up a lot of energy in our lives.
Do you have a good understanding of why her current school isn't working well for your dd? That might be an important piece of information to consider as she moves on.
I'm also really curious why the public school 1/2 classroom that she'd be going into is divided into all girls for 2nd and all boys for 1st. Any ideas why it's split that way?
polarbear
