GreatSchools Review Guide

Who uses GreatSchools

Schools and school districts are listed. GreatSchools prefers reviews from parents with recent, direct experience of a school, students aged 13 or older who attend it, and current or recent teachers, staff and volunteers.

Claim your profile

1. Go to the School Accounts page and claim the school or district profile with a school or district email address.
2. Give the extra information GreatSchools' moderators ask for to verify your identity. Principals, administrators, communications staff and teachers are all eligible.
3. Verify your email address from the message in your inbox to activate the account.
4. GreatSchools staff review every request before publishing updates, and you get an email once the account is approved.
5. The free profile covers contact details, hours, application deadlines, programs and review responses. A district profile lets you claim and manage all schools in the district, and a paid Enhanced Profile adds photos, video, an enrollment link and featured placement in search.

Official guidelines: greatschools.org

Replying to reviews

Once the profile is claimed, sign in, hover over the circle in the upper right and choose Update school(s). Scroll to the review, click Reply to review, type the comment and submit it. To change a response later, use the three-dot menu in the corner of the school leader response box to edit or delete it.

• GreatSchools encourages school leaders to respond to reviews to clarify misconceptions or share more information.
• Its help center suggests acknowledging the concern, apologizing for the experience and explaining what the school is doing about it.
• It also asks leaders to protect student privacy and to take a specific incident offline by inviting the family to get in touch directly.
• School leaders can also write a School Leader review through their School Account.

Official guidelines: greatschools.zendesk.com

Review rules

In our own words. The official page is the rule that applies.

• One review per person per school is allowed every nine months. A new review from the same email address replaces the earlier one.
• No obscene, hateful or inflammatory language, personal attacks, harassment or threats. Apart from the principal or school leader, naming staff is discouraged, and reviews disparaging staff or community members may be removed.
• Allegations of illegal activity belong with the proper authorities, not in a review.
• Reviews may not contain personal data, advertising, spam, links to other sites or references to other review sites.
• GreatSchools staff never edit reviews, not even typos. Reviews from students are read by a moderator before they are posted.
• Reviews do not expire; they stay up unless the same reviewer replaces them.
• GreatSchools uses automated and manual moderation but says it cannot read every review and relies on readers to flag problems.

Official guidelines: greatschools.org

Reporting a review

GreatSchools's own process, step by step.

1. Click the Report link under the review, say how it breaks the guidelines, and submit.
2. Moderators evaluate reported reviews; the community guidelines say within 48 hours and the help center says within one to three days.
3. GreatSchools cannot reply to every report. A review that stays posted after a report was judged to meet the guidelines.
4. GreatSchools removes a review only when it breaks the review or community guidelines, not because it is critical or because a school asks.

Official guidelines: greatschools.zendesk.com

Tips

• Claim the profile and keep programs, deadlines and contact details current.
• Respond to critical reviews calmly and without discussing individual students.
• Look for concerns that repeat across reviews and act on them.
• Invite all families to share recent experiences, not only those you expect to be positive.