GreatSchools.org

Do not use Greatschools.org for checking schools. They use one same cookie cutter for all school systems, which often times can misrepresent/ undervalue a school. Everything they use is based on so-called State test score. They do not look at the other school curriculums and programs. They are the most terrible system out there for parents to use for school checks, please do not use it or trust their information. Completely misleading

After reaching out over 15 times to have inaccurate district and school information for our home there is nothing else to say other than they keep referring us to "Precisely" yet we are not allowed to contact them because they do not have a customer service department. Knowing this information, GreatSchools take zero ownership over the incorrect information and promise to update it quarterly. After waiting for 2 quarters to pass, they have yet to correct any information OR have any plans to.

Great schools.org took down my review for unfounded reasons, and replaced my negative review with five five positive reviews.
Any reputable site would put a disclaimer if five five positive reviews funnel in on the same day.
My review was an honest as I mentioned one school could improve with working collaboratively. I did mention poor morale but not names. My review was accepted but taken down the same that all the five glowing reviews were posted.This is very dangerous for prospective employees snd students. The school reviewed charges 45K a year, and teachers are yelled at in front of parents snd students. I also got " deep breather" calls in my classroom from an internal community phone located down in lobby. ( anyone can use it) I also got glares from upper management. The school has a five star rating after 75 percent of the staff left in June. And this high turnover has been a pattern in the last several years.
Do not trust greatschools.org

The more wealthy and whiter the school, the higher the rating of the school. The rating index methodologies are not evidence based and don't adhere to established statistical analysis when reviewing the underling data. Why this site is allowed to exist at all is unfathomable to me and those who can actually do math. Do not use this horrible site to establish what may be a good school for your child.

The rating from great school is not fair, they are more favored by the realtors for buying and selling property purpose. If you want better school reviews you need to check out niche. They consider everything from the school and gives a much more reasonable review.

They did a major overhaul of how they score schools in 2017 and now it's terrible and damaging to society, it essentially tells families to move to areas that are all-white with zero diversity. Let me explain. A very diverse school in a nice town on the West Coast, if students of different races average different scores, then the overall school is PENALIZED assuming incorrectly they are treating students differently. Meanwhile a poor all-white school with lower overall average scores, still gets 9/10 or 10/10 ratings, again because they aren't penalized by this idiot racial-difference penalization. Maybe the site had good intentions but it actually screws over families that chose to live in diverse towns and rewards all-white supremacy. It's terrible and Zillow should decouple immediately!

The rep who dealt with my support request apparently thought I should be able to handle the issue myself. In addition to requiring multiple follow up contacts, they were condescending and snarky.

The Greatschools.org website is a resource I've used to quickly map the school location, find out socioeconomic composition, and school performance data. All this the site does well. It also has a useful article database, such as http://www.greatschools.org/gk/emotional-smarts/. My difficulty with the website is that it (routinely) sanitizes, deletes, or removes reviews about schools from parents and students. It also appears as if they only like positive reviews; positive review however poorly written are preferable over any reviews exposing any critical flaws with the school itself. That to me is a form of censorship. I want to post a review about a school where the principal cheated me out of my work hours, and they were also ethnically discriminatory, and they are celebrating a purported Hmong hero who was in fact a criminal who smuggled heroin (http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1101/S*******/new-york-times-forgets-that-vang-pao-was-a-drug-dealer.htm). They have a great display case about him at the school, and the principal is very proud of her association with him. The school also serves as a community center for the parents with ELL classes for them. Great Schools also won't let you log in with just Facebook (it wouldn't let me log in with my FB account).