The Texas Tribune has revamped its Public Schools Explorer to provide families and educators with more timely data and features, making it easier to navigate the extensive public school system in Texas.
With a total of 1,202 school districts and 9,113 public schools, including numerous charter schools and alternative campuses, the state of Texas serves approximately 5.5 million students. The updated explorer offers comprehensive information on all these institutions.
Recognizing the overwhelming volume of data, the journalism team has prioritized a more intuitive organization of the site. Enhanced contextual explanations accompany the statistics, clarifying their significance. Additionally, school performance is now measured against both statewide and regional trends, equipping families with a clearer understanding of how their child’s school measures up.
This launch comes at a crucial time, as parents increasingly seek to understand their educational options amidst the growing school choice movement in Texas. The explorer showcases local and nearby campuses, including both traditional school districts and charter schools, while illustrating how school demographics, funding, and other characteristics have evolved over time.
In addition to benefiting families, this tool is designed to assist teachers, school staff, policymakers, and anyone interested in Texas education. It provides accurate and reliable data to help analyze the impact of policy on student outcomes.
Each school district and campus features its own dedicated page, where data is organized into categories such as student demographics, classroom experiences, opportunities, and outcomes. Each category has a unique URL, facilitating the sharing of pertinent information.
The site now includes updated data from the Texas Education Agency, including financial information for school districts, which helps users grasp how schools are funded. The districts page has also been redesigned to simplify the process of finding information using various filters.
Furthermore, the explorer will maintain more current data than ever before. Previously updated annually, it will now incorporate new data as soon as it is released by the state, with financial statistics expected in the spring and state accountability ratings in August.
This new explorer is a continuation of the Data Visuals team’s commitment to covering public education issues that affect students and teachers statewide. Recently, they highlighted the challenges faced by low-income students in achieving higher education outcomes and introduced a lookup tool for readers to examine data specific to their communities.
Feedback is welcomed at schools-feedback@texastribune.org. Additional updates are forthcoming, including new features. After exploring the updated tool, readers are encouraged to delve into the Tribune’s extensive coverage of public education issues throughout Texas.
This initiative is partially funded by the Greater Texas Foundation and the Houston Endowment.
