The New Campus Click

“How are the schools?” is one of the most important questions posed to real estate agents by home seekers.

Agents’ responses to the question range from the very vague to the tremendously detailed. But until recently, even those who provided specifics about school curricula, faculty and after-school activities had to gather information on their own from schools or districts.

But like so much other useful information, data about schools have now migrated onto the Internet, and a variety of private companies and one public agency have Web sites that are vying for parents’ and Realtors’ attention.

At least three companies--the School Report, SchoolMatch and 2001Beyond--provide data about school systems nationwide. Two more, the state Department of Education and School Wise Press, have Web sites that cover California schools exclusively.

The information provided ranges from basics like district enrollment figures and test scores to the kinds of sports programs offered and the grade level at which students can begin studying foreign language or art.

Some of the sites cover only public school systems, others include private institutions as well.

The online services provide dozens of facts, but depending on which company you choose and what kind of information you’re seeking, the data you get from these companies can be meaningful and practical or too broad and nearly useless.

Increasingly, agents say, buyers are eager for all varieties of school data. Buyers realize that finding a home in a neighborhood with good schools affects not only their children’s education, but also the resale value of the home.

“Even if their only child is a few months old, [buyers] want to know about the schools,” said Debbie Ferrari of First Team San Clemente Real Estate. Ferrari provides clients with school data generated by San Diego-based 2001Beyond.

Buyers, she said, are much more sophisticated about evaluating schools than they were in decades past, and they want all the data the Web-based services can provide. “Ten years ago they said, ‘Where is the school?’ but I don’t remember them asking about the scores,” she said.

They are asking now. And some of the Web sites are betting that parents are willing to pay for the answers.

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Reports generated by the various companies range in price from free to nearly $100 for one company’s “full search service,” which tells home buyers which school systems throughout the United States meet criteria they specify.

There’s no shortage of data about schools, and the various groups have found many ways to slice and dice it. Depending on whose report you order, you can learn what kinds of programs a district has for gifted students, the district’s level of spending for guidance counselors, whether the district offers after-school day care, even whether the high school has a marching band.

And all sites offer basics like phone numbers, student enrollment figures, grade levels taught, and the number of schools in the district.

But even the basics can vary among reports. Counting the number of elementary schools in a district seems a simple matter. Yet in reports from two companies--the School Report and 2001Beyond--on six school districts, the companies had conflicting information for five out of six districts.

For example, the School Report said Monrovia Unified has six elementary schools and the Carson High School “complex” within Los Angeles Unified has 13. The report from 2001Beyond gives those numbers as five and 15.

Monrovia Unified’s own Web site says the district has five elementary schools.

And according to an official at Los Angeles Unified, the Carson High School complex has 13 elementary schools, one of which has an on-campus magnet program that could have been counted separately. But the official said she didn’t know where the number 15 would have come from.

Before deciding to order a report from a Web site, it’s wise to decide whether you want to compare districts or focus on specific schools.

The California Department of Education’s Ed-Data Partnership site and School Wise Press can provide information about individual schools.

The School Report and 2001Beyond organize their material by district, but break up large districts such as L.A. Unified into high school-centered clusters.

SchoolMatch reports on entire districts, comparing them with national percentiles for about 20 variables such as school system enrollment, class size and test scores.

Sometimes, it can be a frustrating process just to figure out how to request the information you want from the sites.

For example, on the sites that organize information by high school-centered cluster, if you don’t know which high school serves the elementary school in your new neighborhood, you won’t be able to order the information you want until you find out.

And in a diverse area like Southern California, where school districts can be large and the quality of schools within districts can range from excellent to abysmal, ordering districtwide information may not make sense.

For example, if a family is moving to the Los Angeles area from out of state and hopes to find a home located near a decent elementary school, ordering a SchoolMatch report for the entire 700,000-student Los Angeles Unified district seems impractical.

Certain Reports Aren’t Helpful

Ordering reports for smaller districts--or cluster-based reports from the companies that do them--could be helpful if you are trying to compare them and decide where to look for a home. But if you already know you’ll be living in a certain district and you just need to decide among various elementary schools, the district-wide data may not help much.

In an effort to provide some measure of specific information about individual schools, the SchoolMatch report comes with a “school snapshot” for every high school in the district, and the School Report and 2001Beyond feature “FYI” pages.

But even those aren’t particularly illuminating compared with what the state Department of Education and School Wise Press offers.

Before parents order reports from online companies, they should know what qualities they want in a school, said Lawrence Picus, professor of educational policy and administration at USC.

For example, Picus asks, how important to you is the economic status of children at the school, something you can deduce by looking at the percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price meals? How important are test scores? How important is the ethnic mix of students and of teachers?

“The Web provides some good, useful information,” Picus said. “My concern is parents should make sure they know how to use it.”

Incidentally, not all Web-based services will tell you about ethnic demographics.

SchoolMatch, 2001Beyond and the School Report all supply information to Realtors, so data about ethnicity of students and teachers are omitted, lest real estate agents be accused of violating federal fair housing laws by steering home buyers into or out of particular neighborhoods based on ethnicity.

Tracy Alderson, an agent with Dilbeck Realtors in Pasadena, gathers school data for her clients the old-fashioned way, by going to individual schools to pick up information packets. But she said about half the clients she works with now have done at least some of their schools research on the Internet.

“That’s when I pipe up and say, ‘That’s great, now you have to go to the school,’ ” Alderson said.

Her view is echoed by educators, parents and the Web-site operators alike. Even the most detailed report won’t include information about campus security measures, the level of parent involvement, or the quality of interaction between teachers and students.

“To me the best way to judge a school is just randomly walk in a classroom and see what’s going on,” said USC’s Picus. “These sites are good for narrowing things down, but I would not rely on them exclusively to make a choice.”

Web Services Can Narrow Choices

In some parts of the country parents can choose among numerous school districts to move into, said Kathy Bleimes, chief information officer for Ohio-based SchoolMatch. Bleimes said people should use Web-based services to narrow their choices to a manageable number of school systems.

“It’s very important when you get to that point to go and walk the hallways. You have to take that step to pick where you want your children to be.”

Even if they are switching school districts, parents whose children are about to enter kindergarten or start middle school use the Web sites too, said Steve Rees, founder of School Wise Press.

“They may simply want to say, ‘I’ve done the thing I should do as a diligent parent,’ ” Rees said.

The school-data services employ a variety of methods to deliver their material to the public.

The California Department of Education Web site--which gets about 36,000 hits a month, up from about 10,000 about a year and a half ago--offers all its data on screen, free.

But most of the other services send hard-copy reports through regular mail, and some need your credit card information first.

The School Report, which is primarily oriented toward families who are relocating, provides its materials free--but first you have to answer several questions about whether and when you are moving, and whether you plan to work with a realty agent. Reports are sent to you by a real estate agent who is affiliated with the School Report.

And where does all the data come from?

The Department of Education site and School Wise Press take most of their information directly from the state-administered California Basic Educational Data Systems, a survey answered once a year by every California public school on the same day.

The School Report and 2001Beyond collect data over the phone directly from the districts. Critics say this gives district personnel the chance to embellish the truth about their schools. But the companies gathering information this way say their sources are reliable.

SchoolMatch collects data from sources such as the state, county and federal agencies to which school districts have to report their vital statistics.

Besides their own Web sites, most of the school data services are “partnered” with various media or real estate Web sites--such as https://HomeAdvisor.com, https://Realtor.com, and https://Cyberhomes.com.

But on most of the real estate sites it’s difficult to access meaningful school information.

Cyberhomes’ “free school reports on all the schools in the USA,” for example, provides little more than addresses, phone numbers and total enrollment figures for schools.

HomeAdvisor integrates some information from SchoolMatch into its “neighborhood finder” function, but you can only get to the rest of SchoolMatch’s features by clicking on a tiny link at the bottom of the page.

Cyberhomes and Realtor.com do even less to steer visitors to more detailed school data.

Some Information Can Only Be Gotten in Person

As rapidly evolving as the Web is, there is still no way for home buyers to type in the address of a home for sale and learn what schools their children would likely attend based on the address. To get reliable information about which elementary and high schools serve a home you’re interested in, it’s best to ask school district administrators.

Most school districts also have their own Web sites, although the information they contain varies widely.

Maggie Little, assistant to the superintendent of the Corona-Norco Unified School District in Riverside County, said her growing, 34,000-student district has been so busy creating home pages for each of its 32 schools that she hasn’t had time to assess all the other Web sites providing school data to parents.

Corona-Norco administrators recommend that parents go to one of the commercial nationwide or statewide Web sites if they want to compare the Corona-Norco district with other districts around the state.

But a personal visit, Little said, is the only way to ensure you’ve found a school where the principal has vision and teachers are “making children their priority.”

Or, as Department of Education spokesman Doug Stone put it, “There are some things you are never going to be able to find out electronically.”