Datadory notebook
School Rating Data for Websites: What to License and What Is Free
1,744 datasets. Pick your catch. Every guide here is built on what the catalog can actually prove.
1,744 datasets. Pick your catch.
What school rating data can a website legally show?
The records layer underneath is free federal data. NCES publishes directory attributes for every US public school and district through the CCD-based School & District Search - about 100,000 school detail pages and ~18,000 district pages - while NAEP publishes achievement results for all 50 states plus DC, DoDEA schools and 27 Trial Urban Districts dating to 1990. Those records sit in the commercial delivery terms.
Which fields join rating inputs to your listings?
Join keys decide whether the free stack assembles cleanly. On the K-12 side, the NCES ID is the spine: CCD directory pages key every public school and district by it, and NAEP jurisdiction tables align at state and district level above it. Geocoding comes free of charge elsewhere in the slice rather than from CCD itself.
If your product also shows colleges, two identifiers matter. IPEDS covers 7,000+ Title IV institutions per year across ~20 survey components - the HD2024 directory alone ships as a 1 MB zipped CSV with 72 variables - and the Federal Student Aid Data Center reports aid volume and loan portfolios for about 5,500 schools keyed by OPE ID, with quarters from Q1 2014 onward. Staffing context comes from the National Teacher & Principal Survey, which samples roughly 10,000 schools per cycle (2015-16, 2017-18 and 2020-21).
Is there a school-data equivalent outside the US?
India's UDISE+ reports on about 1.47 million recognised schools (1,466,682 reported for 2025-26) with 86 public statistical reports plus seven micro-data CSV modules; micro-data requires a registered login stating your purpose, so plan the compliance step before sprint planning assumes it away.
Pick up where this leaves off
Every one of these ships with sample rows before you commit to anything.
GreatSchools.org — school search, ratings & profiles
NCES School & District Search / CCD directory pages
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — The Nation's Report Card
NCES Condition of Education (COE) — compiled indicator tables
IPEDS — Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (Use the Data portal)
Federal Student Aid Data Center — Title IV volume & portfolio
Want rows instead of a pitch? Name the datasets.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Get a sampleQuestions worth asking
Is there a free API for school test score data?
Yes. NAEP offers a free JSON Data Service requiring no key, covering aggregate scale scores and achievement-level percentages for 4th, 8th and 12th graders across all 50 states, DC, DoDEA schools and 27 Trial Urban Districts, with main results from 1990. England's Explore Education Statistics adds a public REST API over school-level releases under OGL v3.0.
Which identifiers join school data across sources?
Use NCES IDs for public schools and districts - the CCD directory keys about 100,000 school pages and ~18,000 district pages by them. Colleges key on OPE ID across roughly 5,500 Title IV institutions in Federal Student Aid files, and on IPEDS unit IDs for 7,000+ institutions. France's Annuaire de l'éducation uses UAI codes with coordinates.