Guides to public schools and their data
Plain answers to the questions families and researchers bring: how to choose a district, what Title I means, where school money comes from, how to read attendance, discipline and test figures, and what each federal file covers. The 9 guides read every number from the federal files with its year: the NCES Common Core of Data 2024-25, the F-33 finance survey for fiscal 2023, and the civil-rights and EDFacts files for 2021-22.
Choosing a school
- How to choose a school district
The address first, then the measures that matter
- Magnet, charter and traditional public schools
How they differ and how to apply
- Public and private schools by the numbers
Students, cost, rules and data
- How to read a school's test scores
State tests, NAEP and what they hide
Money and programs
- What is a Title I school?
How schools qualify and how many run a program
- How public schools are funded
Federal, state and local money
Attendance and discipline
- Chronic absenteeism explained
The definition, the numbers, the causes
- How to read school discipline data
Suspensions and expulsions in the CRDC
The data
- Understanding NCES school data
Each federal file and its year
Source: NCES Common Core of Data 2024-25 (Title I status 2021-22), Census Bureau F-33 school finance survey FY2023, Civil Rights Data Collection 2021-22, EDFacts 2022-23; each guide names the file and year under its figures.
About the guides
AI tools draft the guides' text under the data editor's rules; every number in them is a database query on the federal files named in the guide, and each guide states its method and limits. See where our numbers come from.