Announcing the PASSNYC School Explorer
/To improve access to education opportunities (including New York’s specialized high schools) for talented students across the city, we also need to improve access to information about schools. Whether you are a parent, community advocate, researcher or policy maker, we believe information about NYC schools should be easy to find and use--to help everyone make more informed decisions that lead to improved access.
That’s why we created the PASSNYC School Explorer--a tool designed to help you uncover the information you need on elementary and middle schools in New York City.
The School Explorer makes it easier to access key information on 1,270 elementary and middle schools, based on data we combined from NYCDOE, NYSED, NYC OpenData, and Insideschools. We’ve created detailed School Snapshot reports that include demographics, quality metrics, ELA/Math test scores, and contact information, for each school.
The School Explorer is freely available to the public. You can create an account here in order to access the data. We encourage parents, researchers, schools, and organizations to explore the search functionality and the school snapshot reports. Here are just a few of the ways you can use our tool:
- Service providers (mentoring programs, summer programs, test prep providers) and organizations can use the database to identify schools with student populations that match their program needs
- Organizations, researchers and service providers can use the School Explorer to better understand the demographics and DOE quality metrics of schools in certain neighborhoods--and uncover talented high-achieving low income students
- Parents and service providers (mentoring programs, summer programs, test prep providers) can use the tool to easily find school contact information; each Snapshot has emails and phone numbers for important school administrators, family leadership coordinators, and guidance counselors
After logging in, try searching for middle schools in District 5 that are exceeding their target for Rigorous Instruction. The 4 results, including Columbia Secondary School, provide links to school locations, websites, and full School Snapshot report downloads. 60% of Columbia Secondary School’s student body is Black and Hispanic, and the school is exceeding all of its quality metrics.
If you have any feedback or if you would like help using the PASSNYC School Explorer, please contact us at outreach@passnyc.org and one of our research team members will get back to you!
Special thanks to the following PASSNYC team members who helped build the School Explorer: Max Brawer, Kelvin Poon, Shams Naim, Monika Wysocki, and Aron Wander.
