There is a national non profit website called www.Greatschools.org that has graded 200,000 public and private schools in the country on a scale on 1 to 10 and a community rating based on 1-5 stars. 1 being the lowest score and 10 being the highest score and 1 star being the lowest and 5 stars being the highest. It uses the state testing, community reviews and more as a basis of their grading for each school.
You can simply type in your address, school name, or zip code to locate your schools closest to your home. But, the website does not know which school is assigned to your address.
If you do not know your local school. You can usually go on the website for your school district and type in your address on a link to find your school and it should list the schools that is assigned to your address. If the school district website does not have that option, you can usually call your local school district and ask them to look up your address to see your schools.
Once you find your school and click on your school. You will see a numerical rating of 1-10 and a community rating of 1-5 stars. This is your school’s rating from GreatSchools.org.
It then shows you a map of your school location and the GreatSchools.org rating for the schools closest to your school. It also has a link on the map to look for homes for sale near the school.
Below the map, it gives you the Community Score for the school that is based on community reviews of 1-5 stars and it shows you the most current reviews for the school.
You can then click on 3 tabs to get additional information about the school: Reviews, Test Scores and Stats, and a Map.
The Test Scores and Stats Tab has a lot of additional information about the school. There is detailed information about the schools: Test Scores, GreatSchools.org rating, Teachers and Students, and Extracuricular Activities and Programs.
Under Test Scores you can look up your school’s State Testing Results and it shows you how your school’s scores compare to other schools in your state.
In the GreatSchools.org Rating, the rating for the school is broken into its parts by grade level and other categories.
Under the Teacher and Students category, it gives detailed information on the teachers, students, and spending at the school. Under teachers there is information on the teachers’ credentials, experience, and class sizes. Under Students it gives you information about the students at the school: Ethnicities, English Language Learners, other School Programs, and Home Languages of English Language Learners. Last, it shows the school spending per student and a complete breakdown on the school spending.
The last tab explains the Extracurriculars at the school and the School Resources. There is detailed information on the various extra curriculars and what extra curricular activities the school is best known for. This information is based on school surveys that the community can fill out.
The website GreatSchools.org is a user friendly simplified tool to help parents find out about the schools in their area. I hope you found this information helpful.
