Skip to main content
OpenSchoolData

School Report Card

An annual public document produced by each state that provides performance data, demographic information, and accountability ratings for every public school and district.

Reviewed by OpenSchoolData Editorial Team

How It Works

Federal law requires every state to publish annual school report cards with specific data elements, including student achievement on state assessments (disaggregated by subgroup), per-pupil spending, teacher qualifications, graduation rates, and school accountability designations. These report cards are typically published on state education department websites and serve as the primary official source of school performance data for parents and the public. The quality and usability of state report cards varies enormously. Some states present data clearly with user-friendly dashboards, while others bury information in dense tables that are difficult for parents to interpret. Research consistently finds that most parents are unaware their state publishes school report cards, and among those who are aware, many find the reports confusing or unhelpful. This gap between available data and parent understanding is a key motivation for OpenSchoolData. We take the same underlying federal data (NCES Common Core of Data and EDFacts) and present it in a clear, nationally consistent format that any parent can understand. Each school profile displays enrollment, demographics, proficiency rates, and graduation data in plain language, making federal education data accessible without requiring parents to navigate complex government websites.

Related Terms

  • School Accountability, The system by which schools and districts are held responsible for student outcomes, including state ratings, improvement plans, and potential interventions for chronically low-performing schools.
  • National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), The primary federal agency for collecting, analyzing, and reporting education data in the United States, housed within the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education.
  • School Data Profile, The collection of real federal data OpenSchoolData presents for each school, including NCES enrollment, demographics, student-teacher ratio, and EDFacts proficiency and graduation rates.
  • Proficiency Rate, The percentage of students at a school who meet or exceed grade-level standards on state-mandated standardized tests in reading and math.

Explore School Data

Search SchoolsMost Improved SchoolsAll Glossary Terms

Real federal data: NCES CCD enrollment (2022), EDFacts proficiency rates (2020, district-level), EDFacts graduation rates (2019, district-level).

About This Definition

This definition is part of the OpenSchoolData Education Glossary, 33 terms explaining how school performance data works in the United States. All definitions are written in plain language for parents, educators, journalists, and researchers.

School Report Card is one of the U.S. K-12 school outcomes and enrollment concepts that recurs across this site. The definition above is the technical answer; the paragraphs below add the practical context for how the concept connects to the NCES Common Core of Data and EDFacts data behind every per-entity page on the site.

In the NCES Common Core of Data and EDFacts data, this concept shapes one or more of the fields that drive the per-entity grades and rankings on this site. The methodology page describes which fields feed into which output; this glossary entry documents the underlying term.

Source: NCES Common Core of Data, 2026.