Frequently Asked Questions


  1. What is the coverage of SchoolAndHousing?
    Please refer to our coverage page to find out the most updated coverage information.

  2. What does "School Attendance Area Data not available" mean?
    This message will show up under two scenarios. First, for charter schools or private schools, they don't have specific attendance area. Second, for some schools, their attendance area data is not available yet.

  3. How fresh is the data provided by SchoolAndHousing?
    With the best effort, we collect most updated data for SchoolAndHousing. Our most school information are 2011 and 2010 data. Some statistics are 2009 and 2008 data. For those data, we will mark their years.

  4. Why is my IP blocked by SchoolAndHousing.com?
    To prevent our data and services from malicious attacks, we installed the safety guard program. It can automatically detect suspicious visits and block the visiting machine's IP. However, if you think that you are innocent, please contact us at . We can review your case and unblock your IP.

  5. What is School API?
    Academic Performance Index (API) is a score to measure the academic performance and growth of schools on a variety of academic measures. The API ranges between 200 and 1000, with 800 as the statewide goal for all schools.

  6. What is School Combination Search?
    Each property has at least one Elementary School, one Middle School and one High School as its home schools. We call such a series of Elementary, Middle and High schools as a School Combination. School combination search means finding all qualified combinations. School Combination search is available in the More Search Options page.

  7. Can I find schools by API? How can I do it?
    Yes. You can use Combination Search to find schools by API. Although combination search enables user to specify Elementary, Middle and High schools' API, it is not necessary for user to fill all of them. If user is only interested in Elementary School, she/he can only enter Elementary school's API criteria.

  8. Why are the returned schools shown in different colors?
    Schools are displayed on map with different colors. High Schools are marked in Blue, Middle School in Yellow and Elementary School in Green.

  9. Why are result properties shown in different colors?
    In property search, the returned properties are shown in two colors. The red ones are the properties within that attendance area. The blue ones are nearby properties, which are shown for your reference.

  10. What is "Home Prices in Attendance Area"?
    This is a unique regional housing statistic data provided by SchoolAndHousing.com. Based on the housing data within a specific school's attendance area, we compute houses' average price and median price within last 3 months. Usually school attendance area is much smaller than zip code area. Therefore, "statistic data in an attendance area" can better reflect the local housing price than "statistic data in a zip code". "Home Prices in Attendance Area" is shown in the search result table, when user users public school locator. Figure 1 illustrates this field.

    11. Result Table
    Figure1: Search Result Table


  11. What is "School Combinations"?
    For each particular address, there are at least 3 (public) home schools, one Elementary School, one Middle School and one High School. We call such a school set as a "School Combination". Given a specific school, it can be combined with different other schools. For example, some residents who attends "Irvington High School" can attend "Grimmer Elementary" and "Horner Junior High", others can attend "Leitch Elementary" and "Horner Junior High". Thus, there are 2 combinations for "Irvington High School". (In fact, there are total 6 different school combinations for "Irvington High". We just illustrate 2 of them here.) This is a very useful feature. If you are interested in sending your kids to "Irvington High School", you can check all the combinations for "Irvington High", select a proper school combination and find properties within that combination's attendance area.

  12. What is school percentile?
    School percentile shows the relative rank of a school's API, comparing with other similar local schools. We do apple to apple comparison, which means that an Elementary school is only compared with other Elementary schools in San Francisco Bay Area. If an elementary school's percentile is 20%, it means 20% elementary schools in SF bay area have lower API score than this school. Similar comparisons are applied to middle schools and high schools. School percentile can be found in search result table as shown in Figure 1.

  13. What is "SnH Score"™?
    SnH Score™ is a unique index provided by SchoolAndHousing.com. It shows the overall public school performance for a specific address. We consider all the attending schools, from Elementary, Middle to High, associated with the given address. The score is computed based on schools' API scores and relative rankings. This score is a number between 0 and 10. The higher score is, the better school's performance is. School percentile is shown in search result table as shown in Figure 1.