Every tool here is built on public data. This is the catalog of those datasets — each one sourced, normalized, and documented, so anyone can understand exactly what’s behind a number or reuse the data themselves.
Page reviewed July 2026 · each dataset names its source years
The state’s annual fall headcount of every student in every public school, by grade, race/ethnicity, and economic status — normalized across three file-format eras into one SQLite database. The explainer walks the formats, the 2006–07 race/ethnicity change, the gotchas, and the schema.
Powers School Demographics · Read the explainer →
New Jersey's annual report card: NJSLA test scores (the full 1–5 performance levels and student-growth percentiles), graduation rates, and chronic absenteeism. The explainer covers each measure, why we chart test scores against a flat proficiency line, and the suppression and post-COVID caveats.
Powers school & district profiles · Read the explainer →
District user-friendly budget files: proposed operating budgets, operating revenue mix, spending categories, side files, estimated enrollment, and the state-published comparative cost per pupil. The budget layer includes a statewide report, issue briefs, county briefs, district first reads, and full district reports where UFB rows match profiles.
Powers budget report, issue briefs, explorer, and district reports · Read the explainer →
New Jersey’s ESSA calculation workbooks: the indicator results, per-school weights, and weighted points behind a school’s summative score, plus the annual targeted-support flags. The explainer covers why “Summative Determination” is a percentile and not a grade, why two schools’ weights differ, how minimum group sizes drop an indicator entirely, and the three publisher inconsistencies we mark rather than repair.
Powers school profiles & district reports · Read the explainer →
New Jersey's IDEA Section 618 file: how many students each district enrolled, how many held an individualized education program, and the classification rate the state published from the two. The explainer covers why the rate measures neither need nor service quality and has no good direction, the three different ways a cell can be empty — withheld, unpublished, and a real zero — and the disability, race, age and classroom-setting breakdowns this file does not carry at all.
Powers district profiles & district reports · Read the explainer →
Reported full-time-equivalent staffing for four certificated roles in every district, with the race and sex composition of each role. The explainer covers why FTE is workload and not a headcount, why an empty-looking cell is almost always an exact published zero rather than a suppression, the non-binary category New Jersey has never once published a value in, and the fact that it collects no demographics at all for non-certificated staff.
Powers district profiles · Read the explainer →
Five annual editions of the state’s pre-ESSA verdict on every school and district: per student group and subject, whether participation was met and — through 2014 only — whether the group cleared a progress target set for it individually; per group, graduation-rate determinations; per entity, attendance. The explainer covers the asterisk that means the school missed its target, the two editions where New Jersey published no performance determination at all, the undocumented sixth glyph, and the seven-year hole that follows.
Powers school & district profiles · Read the explainer →
Suspensions, police notifications and arrests by district, student group and grade, from the School Performance Report file. The explainer covers the two suppression markers and why they don’t mean the same thing, why New Jersey withholds male and female headcounts while publishing their rates, and how much of the file is blank for the smallest groups — 98% for non-binary students, 90% for American Indian students. Three separate measures, never a safety score.
Powers district profiles & district reports · Read the explainer →
What “documented” buys you: for three school years the state misspelled one column heading — “Eighth Grade” written as “Eight Grade” — and standard tools recorded zero eighth-graders statewide until we caught it. Finding quirks like that, tracing them, and writing them down is the work. See the gotchas →
