An educated decision: making the grade in private education.

• Author: Kennedy, Linda T.
• Position: Executive Living

With about 122 private schools open and operating in Utah (non-treatment and non-correctional facilities), the variety of programs available for the private education of your child is so extensive that local, comprehensive rankings comparing one private school to another are rare.

Private schools don't use public funding and are not required to report their statistics to the State Office of Education. Also, some private schools are affiliated with associations that expect their schools to withhold from participating in rankings, such as the National Association of Independent Schools(NAIS).

The Sutherland Institute, though, a conservative, non-profit, state-based public policy group, makes a yearly effort to rank Utah's public and private schools by academic and environment excellence. "You kind of have a to look at it as if you would rather have no information and go off what the school is telling you or do you want as much information as possible to make an educated choice?" says Lisa Montgomery, assistant to the president at The Sutherland Institute.

Montgomery, who compiles the institute's rankings called "Schools At A Glance" (www.sutherlandinstitute.org), says about 40 percent of Utah's private schools participate in their annual surveys. A questions link on the site explains some details about the rankings, such as what they're based on. If a school doesn't participate, the institute attempts to gather information other ways, such as from the school's Website.

But experts from some of Utah's largest private schools say rankings are not the key criteria you should consider when determining which private school to select for your child.

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"We don't participate in any rankings because we adhere to the NAIS position which says that the best school is the one that uniquely meets the needs of each particular child," says Todd Winters, director at The Waterford School, an independent scool in Sandy adding that in admission interviews, school officials try to learn whether the school's mission is compatible with the family's educational goals.

Private school's offerings vary greatly depending on whether they are independent, parochial or non sectarian. Sister Catherine Kamphaus, CSC Superintendent of Catholic Schools at the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City says students enroll in their parochial schools largely for their association with the Catholic faith, but says their surveys also report high academic programs...