Updated May 2026
School Tools
These tools let you query the same federal datasets that drive every directory page on this site — NCES Common Core of Data for enrollment and demographics, EDFacts for proficiency and graduation rates — across the roughly 95,891 US public schools we cover.
We deliberately keep the tool catalog small. Two questions cover most of what families and researchers actually want to know about a school: what does the federal data say about this specific school, and how do two schools compare side by side? Anything more elaborate tends to invite synthetic scoring that hides as much as it reveals — which is not what we do here.
Available Tools
School Report Card
Look up any of the 95,891 US public schools in our directory. Shows NCES enrollment, grade range, charter and magnet flags, student-teacher ratio, and the district\'s EDFacts proficiency and graduation rate where reported.
Compare Schools
Place two schools side by side on every NCES + EDFacts metric we have: enrollment, level, student-teacher ratio, charter and magnet flags, free-and-reduced-lunch share, district proficiency, and (for high schools) the adjusted-cohort graduation rate.
What the Tools Will and Won\'t Do
Both tools surface federal data exactly as it is published. They will tell you that NCES classifies a campus as elementary, that its student-teacher ratio is 14.2:1, that the district participates in Title I, and that EDFacts reports a 56% combined proficiency rate. They will not invent a letter grade, manufacture a growth percentile, or fold in non-federal indicators (parent reviews, college acceptance lists, standardized test averages from non-state assessments).
For programmatic queries against the same data, the Urban Institute Education Data API is free and well-documented. It is what researchers and reporters typically use when running cross-sectional analyses across multiple states or years.
How to Use Them
For a single school: use the report card tool. Search by school name or city, click the result to open a profile, and read the metrics inline. Each profile links out to the federal NCES School Locator and shows the data\'s vintage so you know how recent it is.
For two schools or two districts: use the compare tool. Paste two slugs or pick from the search dropdown, and you\'ll get a side-by-side row for every metric. Cells where the federal data is missing show N/A so the comparison stays honest. Compare-by-district works the same way at the aggregated district level.
Methodology
Both tools query the same processed JSON files that drive the rest of OpenSchoolData. We do not modify federal numbers, do not synthesize composite scores, and do not adjust for state cut scores when comparing across states (we annotate the caveat instead). For the full data lineage, see the methodology page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this a free tool?
Yes. There is no signup, no paywall, no email gate. Federal school data is public; our job is to make it easy to query, compare, and cite.
What data sources do the tools use?
Both tools read from the same processed NCES Common Core of Data and EDFacts files that drive the rest of this site. NCES supplies enrollment, demographics, charter / magnet / Title I status flags, grade range, and student-teacher ratio. EDFacts supplies the district-level math and reading proficiency rate plus the four-year adjusted-cohort graduation rate for high schools. The Urban Institute Education Data API offers a programmable mirror of the same fields for researchers building larger analyses.
Why do schools in the same district sometimes show identical proficiency rates?
Because EDFacts publishes proficiency at the district level, not the individual school. We apply the district number uniformly to every school in that district. This is the most honest way to display the federal data — but it means a strong school inside a struggling district will look weaker than it is, and vice versa.
Why is data missing for some schools?
Two main reasons. First, EDFacts suppresses results for very small subgroups to protect student privacy, so districts with few tested students may show no rate. Second, brand-new schools or recently reorganized buildings may not yet have a full year of data in the federal collection. Missing data appears as N/A or a dash in the tools — never as zero.
How do I cite this data?
Cite the original federal source: "NCES Common Core of Data, [year]" and "U.S. Department of Education EDFacts, [year]." If you want to acknowledge this site, OpenSchoolData ({DOMAIN}) is fine, but the data itself is federal. We do not own it.
How current is the data behind the tools?
The most recent NCES CCD and EDFacts releases drive the figures shown; both run on an annual cadence with about a one-year lag. The site was last regenerated in May 2026.
These tools let you query the same federal datasets that drive every directory page on this site — NCES Common Core of Data for enrollment and demographics, EDFacts for proficiency and graduation rates — across the roughly 95,891 US public schools we cover.