Database of schools in the US.

August 7, 2007 10:15 AM

Looking for a free downloadable database of schools in the US.

I am working on a project and need a database of schools in the US, that we can integrate into the web site. I have found a place I can buy it, but it seems this would be public domain information.

posted by Mr_Zero to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

It is public domain, but you'll have to do some cutting and pasting, I think.

Privateschoolreview is great for the private school sector.

And similarly for public schools. Just enter a state and you get everything there.
posted by beagle at 10:27 AM on August 7, 2007

Forget my first link, just look at the private school part of the other site, here.

Actually in the public school search, above, if you enter "1" "or more" for the number of students, it will return the entire database of about 16000 records, which can then be downloaded in Excel format. This trick doesn't seem to work on the private school side of the site, so you may have to download them state by state.
posted by beagle at 10:43 AM on August 7, 2007

Sorry, one more correction. The "1 or more" search is in the School Districts section. For both public and private schools you have to go by state. But if you contact them, they might just send you the whole database zipped.
posted by beagle at 10:48 AM on August 7, 2007

Looks like datafiles are posted on that site as well.
posted by yarrow at 11:01 AM on August 7, 2007

Department of Education's got to have that database somewhere. If you don't mind waiting a few months in exchange for a complete dataset, submit a freedom of information act request for it.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 1:35 PM on August 7, 2007

District boundaries are included in TIGER/Line geographic data, and I think individual school points may be, too.
posted by Myself at 1:03 AM on August 8, 2007