Where can I find data on local schools?

When choosing where to live or comparing schools, many parents turn to resources like Great Schools and Niche, which offer school ratings based on public data and parent feedback. However, because students with disabilities make up a smaller demographic, these ratings often fall short as a reliable resource for Undivided families. Fortunately, there are other options.

• California School Dashboard, which allows you to view your individual school’s performance across various metrics. For many of these measures, you can look at the Students with Disabilities Report.

• For a deeper dive, Ed-Data.org is a platform funded by the California Department of Education that provides detailed data on California's K-12 public schools, districts, and counties. Ed-Data provides all the metrics found on the Dashboard, presented in graphs with detailed numbers and percentages spanning several years. It also includes district-level financial information about your school.

• Each year, every public school district or charter school (collectively known as Local Education Authorities) is required to submit data to the CDE for the Annual Special Education Performance Plan (SPP), which the state then submits to the U.S. Department of Education. The reports are available for all LEAs as Microsoft Word documents on the CDE website.

• California Alternate Assessment (CAA) performance outcomes are not recorded in the annual performance reports, but they are included in the participation rates. For CAA outcomes (including at the school level in some cases), visit the CAASP website.

• A number of documents must be posted on your school website. Most useful is perhaps the School Accountability Report Card (SARC). You can find a link to the SARC on Ed-Data.org. Non-public schools are also required to post a SARC.

• Each school in California also now has a page in the California Department of Education School Directory that links to a school profile and a district profile. Both profiles offer statistical information, but special education data is available only at a district level. This shows you enrollment numbers by race/ethnicity and the educational setting.

• You can also generate your own reports using this data via CDE DataQuest. For example, you can generate a report for each SELPA showing the IEP eligibility category by race/ethnicity.

For more information on each of these systems and how to use them, see our full article How to Find Data about Your Child's School District — and Why.