As a parent and a former teacher, I know the importance of education. Parents have a number of options regarding the kind of school for their children. Public school districts offer local neighborhood school as well as magnet and charter schools. In addition, there are numerous secular and religious private schools. Even homeschooling is an option. Selecting the right school for your family is a unique personal decision.
The links below provide information about schools including the test scores of public schools. Private schools usually do not publish their scores. Many factors play into evaluating a school, academic scores are just one.
District Locator - Enter an address to find the school district in which it resides. Most school districts do not include their school locator map, but this information is available by calling the school district directly.
School Information - This is a link to the California Department of Education (CDE) Dataquest. I would suggest selecting the "County" for Level and then "Create your own report" for the Subject. Then click submit, choose the county "Santa Clara" then you can select information such as class sizes, ethnic breakdowns, graduation or drop out rates.
State Public School Directory - California Department of Education public school list.
State Private School Directory - California Department of Education private school list.
Catholic Schools - Diocese of San Jose schools in Santa Clara County.
ED-Data - This site puts the state school data into a readable format. Search by district, school, county, etc. Here you can find the schools API scores as well as their growth records.
School Rankings - Need an easy to read ranking of schools from 1 to 10: From the home page select the desired county and press submit. Select the 2004 API Base Report - List of Schools in the County and press submit. The third column listed the school's ranking, 10 being a top school.
California Colleges - This site is dedicated to colleges in California.
Private Education: A Choice Decision - This article from Babyzone offers a guide on evaluating private schools. Many of the questions are valid in public schools as well.
