High School Directory. Now online!

At The Public Good, we explore free and open government data, with an eye towards making public information accessible to the public. Besides analyzing data as part of our policy research and program design work, we look at the impact of improving access to public information and its value for ordinary citizens.

We believe that information about publicly funded programs should be accessible to everyone. Because increasing knowledge about government policies and services helps public consumers find the resources and make the choices best suited to meet their needs.

This is especially true when it comes to public education. However, with a school system as large as NYC’s, ensuring that everyone can easily access all the information they need to make timely and significant decisions is a constant challenge.

This spreadsheet is a test case that has filtered criteria such as graduation rate (87% minimum) which is an important indicator to me, holding everything else equal. Keep in mind, there are close to 100 columns and it can be hard to associate variables specific to each of multiple programs within schools because it was saved as a flat-file, rather than a conventional database that can parse relationships between columns. It’s still a heck of a lot easier than working with the monstrous print directory and it respects my family’s needs and preferences - unlike the current My Schools search tool.