School data should be honest.
SchoolScope scores every California public elementary, middle, and high school 0–100 using 20+ public data sources — CDE, NCES, U.S. Census Bureau, the University of California, and the College Board — including 2025 CAASPP test-year data. Every weight, formula, and limitation is published. No school pays for better placement. No black box.
Data: California Dept. of Education, 2025 test year · Updated August 2026
What we stand for
- 1No school pays for better placement. Our customers are parents, not schools. No sponsored profiles, no premium listings, no arrangement that puts one school above another for any reason other than the data.
- 2The methodology is public. Every weight, every data source, every known limitation—published on our methodology page. If you disagree with how we weight growth vs. test scores, you can see exactly where and why. No black box.
- 3A score is a starting point, not a verdict. Every school profile says what the data can’t capture: teaching quality, school culture, arts programs, how the front office treats you when you call. We show the score. We also show its limits.
- 4Demographics are context, not score. We show who goes to a school. We show equity gaps. We never bake demographics into the Scope Score. A school serving a low-income community shouldn’t lose points for who it serves—it should get credit for what it does with the students who walk in the door.
- 5Fresh data, direct from the source. We pull from California’s Department of Education as soon as new data is released each year. Not intermediary APIs. Not federal datasets running years behind state data. The 2025 school year uses 2025 data.
- 6Growth matters more than raw scores. A school that takes kids from “below standard” to “met standard”is doing something harder and more valuable than a school that coasts on students who arrived already ahead. Our scoring methodology rewards that work explicitly.
- 7You should be able to adjust the weights. We make judgment calls about what matters—and we say so openly. If you think we overweight test scores or underweight school climate, you’ll soon be able to change the formula yourself and see your score. Your priorities, your score.
Our approach to equity
Every school rating system correlates with race and income, and ours is no exception—proficiency levels partly reflect who enrolls, and we say so. What we can do: put real weight on growth, the measure that barely tracks family income, and keep demographics out of the formula entirely.
A school where 95% of students qualify for Free/Reduced Lunch and 70% exceeded the state standard is doing something remarkable. A scoring system that penalizes it for serving low-income families is telling you the wrong story.
- Equity gap breakdowns: test scores, absenteeism, and suspension disaggregated by student subgroup — showing how each group actually performs
- Demographic composition vs. surrounding neighborhood
- Per-pupil spending so you can see resource differences
- ELPAC proficiency: the share of English Learners reaching full fluency—shaped by the school, and by how recently students arrived
We never penalize a school for who it serves. Demographics, income mix, and neighborhood profile are shown as context on every profile—they are never part of the Scope Score.
The Scope Score never includes demographics, and it leans hard on growth trajectory—the dimension that stays nearly flat across income levels. Proficiency levels only partly separate the school from its enrollment; we reweighted the formula in August 2026 to shrink that problem, and the methodology page documents exactly how far it goes.
Read our full reasoning: why we show diversity but don't score it →
Where does SchoolScope get its data?
Every number on SchoolScope traces back to a government source in two clicks or less.
We download data directly from the California Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Education (NCES), and the U.S. Census Bureau. We do not scrape, license, or resell data from any other school rating site. Our analysis and Scope Score methodology are original—the underlying data is public.
Want to verify any number? Our methodology page links to the exact data files and explains every calculation.
Data sources
We pull from 20+ public data sources: federal and state agencies, the University of California, the College Board, and the International Baccalaureate Organization. Every source below is freely available to the public—we link directly to where you can download the same files yourself. For a technical explanation of how each source feeds into the Scope Score formula, see our methodology page.
Who built this
Coverage & expansion
SchoolScope currently covers California. We’re building toward nationwide coverage—many of our data sources (NCES, Census) are already national. As we expand to additional states, each state page will document the specific assessment data used, since standardized testing varies by state.
Our current data reflects the 2025 test year. Data is updated annually when new results are published by each agency.
See it in action
The principles above are only worth something if the product delivers on them. Explore California schools and see for yourself. If you want to understand every number on the page, the full methodology is there—every weight, formula, and limitation, all published.
Contact
Questions about our methodology? Found an error in the data? Want to collaborate? Get in touch.