Data Sources
This page explains where the major fields on California School Trends come from.
The short version:
- Most academic performance fields come from CAASPP research files.
- Most school and district identity fields come from the California Department of Education (CDE) School Directory.
- Whole-population low-income and English learner counts come from CALPADS student-group data.
- Board and election fields come from CEDA, county-certified election sources, and current district board pages.
- District boundary maps come from the California school district areas GeoJSON published through California's GIS data portal.
Core rule
We try to keep a clear separation between:
- direct source fields from public state or district datasets
- derived fields we calculate from those source rows
Examples of derived fields:
- 2-year trend deltas
- combined reading + math scores
- percentile and rank displays
- page-level summaries
School page fields
Identity and location
| Field family | Source |
|---|---|
| School name, CDS code, district, city, grade span, school level, charter status | CDE School Directory public school files |
| Street address, city, ZIP, latitude, longitude | CDE School Directory school files |
| Map point shown on site | CDE directory coordinates by default, with reviewed overrides from the site's map-location override layer when available |
Notes:
- Some school map points are refined with reviewed overrides so the point better matches the campus or school POI.
- When schools share the same or nearly the same coordinates, the site may still apply a small display-only separation on maps.
Academic performance
| Field family | Source |
|---|---|
readingScore, mathScore | CAASPP latest proficiency rates |
readingHistory, mathHistory | CAASPP historical proficiency rates |
| Race and ethnicity performance breakdowns | CAASPP student-group rows |
| Low-income subgroup proficiency charts | CAASPP economic-status subgroup rows |
| English learner subgroup proficiency charts | CAASPP English-language-fluency subgroup rows |
| Grade distribution charts | CAASPP grade-level score distributions |
Derived from CAASPP:
- 2-year reading and math trend deltas
- statewide and district rank fields
- performance summaries shown near the top of school pages
School context
| Field family | Source |
|---|---|
| Student enrollment | CDE enrollment files |
| Student / teacher ratio, teacher FTE | CDE staffing / student-teacher ratio files |
| Graduation rate | CDE ACGR files |
| FRPM percentage | CDE FRPM files |
| Per-student spending | California education finance files, summarized into per-student spending metrics for the site |
Student-group counts shown in “Other Stats”
| Field family | Source |
|---|---|
| Low-income student count and percentage | CALPADS UPC |
| English learner count and percentage | CALPADS UPC |
Important:
- These are whole-population demographic counts, not CAASPP-tested subgroup counts.
- On the site, “Low-Income Students” and “English Learners” in the
Other Statstable are based on California’s CALPADS student-group data.
District page fields
Identity and coverage
| Field family | Source |
|---|---|
| District name, CDS code, district type, county | CDE School Directory district files |
| District center point | Public district boundary and map geometry data, reduced to a center point for display |
| District school list | CDE School Directory school files, grouped under each district |
Academic performance
| Field family | Source |
|---|---|
| District reading and math scores | CAASPP district-level proficiency rows when available; otherwise weighted school fallback |
| District reading and math history | CAASPP district-level history or weighted school fallback |
| District subgroup charts | CAASPP district subgroup rows |
| District proficiency tracker | CAASPP grade 3 reading rows |
Derived fields:
- district 2-year trend deltas
- district statewide rank / percentile
- district reading rank
- district math rank
District context
| Field family | Source |
|---|---|
| Total students | Built from current district metric rows / school totals |
| Student / teacher ratio | Derived from total students and teacher FTE |
| Spend per student | California education finance files, summarized into per-student spending metrics for the site |
| Low-income student count and percentage | CALPADS UPC |
| English learner count and percentage | CALPADS UPC |
Board and election fields
Board data comes from more than one source family because no single statewide file cleanly covers every district’s current seated board.
Historical election context
| Field family | Source |
|---|---|
| Historical board election candidates and results | California Elections Data Archive (CEDA) |
| County-certified board result enrichment for supported counties | County election sources, including Contra Costa and San Francisco |
| Election-year metadata such as elected year, term context, margin, appointed/incumbent hints | Derived from normalized election tables built from those public result sources |
Current board roster fields
| Field family | Source |
|---|---|
| Current member names, roles, emails, board page URLs | Public district board pages and district trustee profile pages |
| District board website | District web profile / board page discovery pipeline |
Notes:
- Board rosters are not inferred from election data alone.
- When the site has a current board roster with emails, that usually comes from the district’s published board pages or trustee profile pages.
- Current board pages can override or refine what historical election data implies.
Search, rankings, and research pages
These pages mostly reuse the same underlying fields described above.
Search
| Page | Source |
|---|---|
| School search | Site school index built from normalized school payloads |
| District search | Site district index built from normalized district payloads |
Research pages
| Research page family | Primary source fields |
|---|---|
| Spending pages | District finance fields + district reading/math fields |
| Student-teacher ratio pages | Staffing ratio fields + district reading/math fields |
| Performance distribution pages | School and district reading/math proficiency fields |
| Low-income leader pages | CAASPP low-income subgroup performance fields |
| English learner leader pages | CAASPP English learner subgroup performance fields |
| High low-income-share school pages | CALPADS UPC low-income share + overall school reading/math proficiency |
Map and boundary data
| Field family | Source |
|---|---|
| District polygons / boundaries | California school district areas GeoJSON published through California's GIS data portal |
| School point markers | CDE School Directory coordinates by default, with reviewed map-location overrides when needed |
Source systems and files
Academic performance
School and district directory
Enrollment
Staffing and student-teacher ratio
Graduation
FRPM
CALPADS student-group counts
Election and board sources
- California Elections Data Archive (CEDA)
- District board pages
- current district trustee and board profile pages published by districts themselves
Important caveats
Demographic percentages may not use the same denominator as the page’s enrollment field
Some pages show:
- enrollment from one official state file
- low-income or English learner percentages from CALPADS UPC
Those official denominators can differ slightly even within the same school year. The counts and percentages shown for student groups come from the same CALPADS row.
Some district scores use a fallback
When direct districtwide CAASPP rows are missing or suppressed, the site may use a weighted school-based fallback for district reading and math summaries.
That fallback is built year by year from the district's school-level CAASPP proficiency rows:
- each school's proficiency rate is weighted by that school's tested student count for the same subject and year
- those weighted values are summed across the district's schools
- the total is divided by the combined tested student count to produce a district-level proficiency estimate
The site then uses that same fallback history to derive the district's current reading and math scores, so the top-line score and the trend chart stay on the same basis.
This keeps the fallback tied to public CAASPP data, but it is still an estimate derived from school rows rather than a direct published districtwide CAASPP row.
