GreatSchools.net Launches Free Online National School Directory

San Francisco, CA - Gone are the days when parents simply enrolled their children in the neighborhood school. Charter school legislation and flexible public school enrollment laws have given parents across the country an unprecedented number of options when picking schools for their children. A new online directory (www.greatschools.net) created by Great Schools Inc, a non-partisan nonprofit organization focused on education information, now gives parents across the country the background they need to make informed decisions about school selection.

Using data gathered from a national data clearinghouse, the GreatSchools.net national directory provides easy online information about every public and private school nationwide-more than 100,000 schools are listed on the site. Each school's profile contains the school address and phone number, links to district information, student-teacher ratio and student enrollment figures. The directory allows users to conveniently search for information by city, school district or street address and to compare schools in a given region according to a number of indicators. According to Bill Jackson, president of GreatSchools.net, "This directory represents our organization's first step toward a truly national comprehensive site that will eventually extend the depth of information that currently exists for California and Arizona to all fifty states."

To coincide with the creation of its national directory, GreatSchools.net has formed a partnership with Education Week (www.edweek.org), the premier source of information for America's educators. Education Week's insightful editorial content can now be found on the GreatSchools.net Web site. "We chose to work with GreatSchools.net because we think the site is well-organized and thorough. There is no doubt that parents will find this information useful," notes Angela Lunter of Education Week.

GreatSchools Inc. is an independent 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1998 with a mission to provide parents with the information they need to choose schools, support their children's education and advocate for educational excellence. GreatSchools hosts a Web site, www.greatschools.net, which offers free in-depth profiles of all Arizona and California district, charter, and private schools, a national school directory and interactive search tools. GreatSchools is made possible with contributions from corporate sponsors and foundations.

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