Every public school with recent state test results gets an allk12 Grade, from A+ to F. The grade compares a school only with other public schools in the same state and at the same level, so an elementary school in Ohio is measured against other Ohio elementary schools. Each state writes its own test and sets its own passing bar, which means a 60 percent pass rate in one state can be a very different result in another.

The grade has three parts.

Test scores matter most, because they are the clearest measure of what students know. On their own, though, they mostly track family income: schools in wealthy areas post high pass rates almost everywhere. The beats-expectations part gives credit to a school whose students do better than its poverty level predicts, and it marks down a school with every advantage that still falls short. The trend shows whether results are moving up or down.

Each part is turned into a percentile among the school's peers, from 0 to 100. Small schools are pulled toward the middle before ranking, in proportion to how few students they test, so one strong or weak year at a 40-student school cannot put it at the top or bottom of its state. The three percentiles are then combined using the weights above. When a part is missing, for example because a state does not report low-income students in a way we can use, or because the school has no comparable test from three years back, the grade uses the parts that exist and scales their weights up to 100 percent. The combined number is ranked one last time within the peer group, and that final percentile sets the letter.

Because the scale is set within each state, every state has about the same share of A's and F's. A grade says how a school compares with its neighbors in the same system. It does not say that a B in one state equals a B in another.

Schools without a grade

Some schools are not graded. Schools that serve specialized populations, including schools for the deaf or blind, therapeutic and juvenile-justice placements, and alternative education programs, are left out because state test results are not a fair comparison for their students. Virtual schools are left out because they enroll students from across a state. Schools with no state test results for 2023-24 or 2024-25 have nothing to grade, which covers most schools that end before third grade, and schools with fewer than 20 students are left out as too small to measure.

Test results come from each state's department of education. Enrollment and low-income counts come from the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data. Grades are recalculated whenever new results are loaded. The full list for any state is on the top-graded schools ranking, and the poverty-adjusted part is explained in more detail in the schools that most beat their demographics.