Where the information comes from

Public data, with a clear paper trail

SchoolReality brings together federal files using each school’s NCES identifier. We preserve the source year, missing-value meaning, and download record so every figure can be traced back.

Civil Rights Data Collection

The 2021–22 public-use release covers 98,010 schools. It tells us what schools or districts reported about staffing, discipline, restraint and seclusion, harassment, school offenses, advanced programs, college-readiness participation, athletics, and technology access.

NCES school records and locations

The matching 2021–22 NCES directory contains 102,130 schools. We matched 95,254 of the CRDC records to it—a 97.19% match rate—and added coordinates for 102,130 schools. A separate preliminary 2025–26 directory helps us flag whether a historical school still appears open and supplies current phone and website fields where reported; it does not replace the 2021–22 record.

The 2021–22 NCES school staff file supplies teacher full-time-equivalent counts. These are shown separately from CRDC counselor, nurse, psychologist, social-worker, and security staffing so they are not mistaken for a complete all-staff total.

Current District of Columbia profiles

All 117 current DCPS schools are matched to the 2024–25 OSSE directory, assessment, attendance and accountability releases. School codes are joined to current NCES identifiers, and suppressed values remain suppressed. Additional school-specific sources appear only when they have been verified separately.

Checks before publication

We check record counts, joins, duplicate IDs, missing-value codes, and database relationships. The counselor and school-security totals also align closely with the Education Department’s published national findings.

How search interest is used

A Google Keyword Planner export helps us understand the questions families search for. It can influence which explanations we write first, but it never supplies facts about a school and never changes a school’s results.

Reviews and community comments

Third-party ratings and reviews are not currently shown. They will remain separate from official data if added later and will never silently change a school's results.