GreatSchools


GreatSchools is a United States national nonprofit organization that provides information about PK-12 schools and education. The website provides ratings and comparison tools based on test scores and other factors for schools in the U.S., the GreatSchools database contains information for more than 138,000 public, private, and charter schools in the United States.

History

GreatSchools was founded in 1998 as a school directory and parenting resource in Santa Clara County, with seed funding from New Schools Venture Fund. The next four years, the school ratings expanded statewide in California and expanded nationwide in 2003. In 2008–2011 the College Bound Program was launched, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Robertson Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. In 2013 GreatSchools received a three-year grant from the Walton Family Foundation and saw Zillow integrate GreatSchools information such as school search, school ratings and reviews into their real estate database. In 2014, there was an expanded partnership with Maponics.

Recognition and awards

In 2017, GreatSchools began using proprietary ratings called Equity and Academic Progress in addition to test scores to calculate schools' overall ratings. Schools with a small population of disadvantaged students were given an arbitrary Equity rating. The change had the effect of lowering the rating for many highly rated schools and raising ratings for poorly performing schools. The change has been a subject of considerable controversy with parents and teachers.