The bulletin board for America's public schools. Parents, teachers, students, and staff. One community per school.

Press & data resources

allk12 is an independent K-12 data platform covering all 103,000 US public schools. We publish original analyses of NCES Common Core of Data, state-native assessment data, and American Community Survey demographics, and we maintain the open-source BeatsExpectations score: a demographically-adjusted per-school performance metric.

All published data and analysis on allk12.com is licensed CC-BY 4.0. Republish, embed, and remix freely with attribution. When citing, please link to allk12.com rather than just naming it; the hyperlink is what helps a small independent publisher stay findable.

Press contact
[email protected]
If you need state-level or school-level data we haven't published, email and we'll prep a custom cut within 48 hours.

At a glance

US public schools tracked
103,325
NCES SY 2024-25 universe
Schools with BeatsExpectations score
64,905
across 38 states
Assessment rows
2.4M
all 50 states + DC
Published data reports
31
CC-BY licensed
Per-state ranking pages
460
51 states × 8 categories + hub
NCES vintages of school history
4
SY 2017-18, 2022-23, 2023-24, 2024-25

Story-ready angles

Each links to the full report with state-by-state breakdown + CSV.
7,962 US public schools closed in seven years
2.03M students displaced. Vermont lost 48% of its school stock; California 1,286 closures. State-by-state CSV.
The Northeast led demographic change, not the Sun Belt
Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Utah, and Massachusetts had the largest shifts in school racial composition 2017-2024.
811,000 students now enroll in US virtual public schools
Up from 560,000 in 2022-23. Five states host the bulk; CREDO outcomes research is consistently sobering.
The 1,000+ schools beating their demographics
BeatsExpectations: an open-source per-state regression of proficiency on free-and-reduced-lunch share. Top schools nationally + by state.
The 785 schools that lost half their students
Schools that stayed open but lost more than 50% of enrollment 2017-2024. The slow-motion side of school closure.
8,343 new US public schools opened since 2017
Sun Belt suburbs, charter authorization, post-COVID virtual schools. Where the new buildings are going up.
Within-district achievement gaps of 40+ points
The largest gaps in US K-12 sit inside single school districts, between neighboring schools under one school board.

Methodology: BeatsExpectations

Most public-school rankings sort by raw test scores, which structurally favors wealthy schools. BeatsExpectations adjusts for that. For each US state with sufficient data (38 states currently), we run an ordinary-least-squares regression of composite math + reading proficiency on free-and-reduced-lunch share. The regression gives us a predicted proficiency for every school based on its FRL profile. The difference between actual and predicted, in percentage points, is the school's BeatsExpectations score.

Schools in the top 10% within their state by residual are tagged OUTPERFORMING. Bottom 10% are UNDERPERFORMING. Middle 80% are AS EXPECTED. Thresholds are state-specific because each state uses its own assessment with different rigor and cut scores.

The formula is public, the code is in our public repository, and the score is fully reproducible from the source NCES and state-assessment data. Full methodology, limits, and assumptions →

Datasets & CSV downloads

Direct CSV links for any reporter who wants the raw rows. All CC-BY 4.0.

Citation format

Three ways to attribute, depending on your style guide. The plain-English version is what we recommend for news articles. In all three forms, please make "allk12.com" a hyperlink to https://allk12.com. That's the part that actually helps an independent publisher get discovered. A bare text mention is allowed under CC-BY but does not get the data project the credit it needs to keep producing this work.

Plain English (with link)
Data: <a href="https://allk12.com">allk12.com</a> (CC-BY 4.0)
APA
allk12. (2026). BeatsExpectations: Demographically-Adjusted US Public School Performance Score. Retrieved from https://allk12.com/reports/schools-beating-expectations
Chicago
"BeatsExpectations: Demographically-Adjusted US Public School Performance Score." allk12, 2026. https://allk12.com/reports/schools-beating-expectations.

About allk12 (boilerplate)

Two paragraphs to quote, paraphrase, or adapt.

allk12.com is an independent K-12 data platform covering all 103,000 US public schools. It publishes the open-source BeatsExpectations score, which adjusts school proficiency rankings for student demographics, and maintains state-by-state datasets on enrollment, closures, demographic change, and assessment outcomes.

Data is sourced from the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data, state-native assessment programs, and the American Community Survey. All published analyses are licensed CC-BY 4.0.

Other resources

All published reports →Best Schools rankings (every state) →State-by-state school directory →Editorial blog →