Great Philly Schools website

Posted by on November 12, 2012

PSP launches new website for information on city schools

The Philadelphia Schools Partnership has launched a new website, GreatPhillySchools.org, where families can get information about every city school, public, charter, Catholic, and private, including details such as extracurricular activities offered to violent incidents per 100 students.

Information about more than 400 schools is available on the website. Most of the data available for parents to peruse were publicly available in the past, but often not easy to access.  Most notable is that Catholic schools’ information is included. In the past, detailed information about those schools was often not easily available.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a 2010 Pew Charitable Trusts study was the impetus for the site. In that study, 42 percent of parents of school-age Philadelphia children said they found it “very hard” or “somewhat hard” to find enough information about city educational options.

Parents can now search schools by neighborhood, test scores, and other factors. They can do side-by-side comparisons of schools, and read articles on things like what questions to ask of schools and how to transfer to a district high school.

Parents sat on the advisory panel that helped create the site, along with representatives from the Public School Notebook, a nonprofit newspaper and website that covers city education.

To view the site, go here.

http://www.greatcityschools.org/