Today, when homebuyers ask real estate agents, “Where are the best schools?” many agents refer clients to GreatSchools.org. This is no surprise, considering their ratings are published on Zillow, Redfin and Realtor.com.

The Fair Housing Act (1968) was enacted to address discrimination in housing. It created legal and ethical boundaries for real estate agents in relation to the communities they sell in.

What is GreatSchools and where do they obtain their data?
GreatSchools is the leading nonprofit site providing information that supports parents researching to find a great education for their child. They support schools striving for excellence, and communities working to diminish inequities in education.

GreatSchools collects and analyzes data from all 51 state departments of education and the federal government to provide analysis, insights and school quality ratings for parents, partners, researchers and policymakers.

How GreatSchools’ ratings system skews the numbers
GreatSchools ratings effectively penalize schools that serve largely low-income students and those serving largely Hispanic and Black students, generally giving them significantly lower ratings than schools serving more affluent communities and more white and Asian students, a Chalkbeat analysis found.

The result is a ubiquitous, privately run school ratings system that is steering people toward whiter, more affluent schools.

GreatSchools’ reliance on test scores tends to give higher scores to schools where parents have the highest incomes and low scores to schools where parents have low incomes. This is because test scores are more correlated with the parent’s education, income and socioeconomic status than how good a school is at teaching.

Furthermore, GreatSchools’ reliance on test score gaps between higher and lower-income students tends to downgrade schools with socioeconomic diversity. While some schools are successfully putting forth efforts to close the achievement gap, and these efforts are important, the achievement gap is a result of a myriad of societal factors. It is not fair to hold public schools fully responsible if an achievement gap exists.

These two measures result in a rating system that gives high ratings to homogenous schools where parents have high incomes and lower ratings to diverse schools where parents have diverse incomes.

Alternative resources provide a more balanced picture
GreatSchools are not the only ratings available. Other sites include Niche and SchoolDigger, and  SchoolSparrow. How are these sites different?

Niche: A market leader in connecting colleges and schools with students and families, offering in-depth profiles on every school and college in America, over 140 million reviews and ratings, and powerful search and data tools. This site uses the most up-to-date data available from dozens of public data sources including the Department of Education, U.S. Census, and FBI.

SchoolDigger: SchoolDigger.com was founded in 2006 to serve one purpose: to empower parents to make informed choices about choosing a school for their child. They use a database that contains detailed profiles for over 136,000 schools in every state in the U.S., including 20 years of enrollment data, several years of test scores, crime data and real estate data.

SchoolSparrow: Uses a rating system, validated by a data scientist out of the University of Chicago, that accounts for parent income when considering standardized test scores, and thus reflects how schools, not socioeconomic status, are influencing student performance.