Dashboards
Capability proof
Private School Data
Explore ACSI, AACS, and NCES private-school records through separate, source-aware national directory views.
Explore Private School DataPrivate Christian education is personally meaningful to Paul. His children attend a private Christian school, and more than five years of service on the school board connected to their church gave him a close view of the commitment, community, and opportunity inside these schools.
That experience raised a broader question: what does private education look like at national scale? Three useful sources existed in different forms and described schools in different ways. The opportunity was to preserve each source, make its scope visible online, and create a practical path from a national picture to an individual school.
The released product provides separate views for the Association of Christian Schools International directory, the American Association of Christian Schools 2024 directory, and the NCES 2021–22 Private School Universe Survey. It keeps each source's meaning and edition visible rather than presenting the records as one deduplicated census.
Three different sources. One source-aware research product.
Extract a changing public directory
Why it was difficult
The source was organized as browsable directory pages rather than a ready-made national research file. A historical parser also produced a broken candidate in which every school name was blank after two source tables were merged ambiguously.
The response
Preserve the source exports, diagnose the failed transformation, and build a resumable puller that enumerates 56 U.S. state and territory partitions and collects 2,500 current school detail pages. Every accepted output remains hashable and reviewable rather than being assembled by a live scrape in the public request path.
Preserve history without overstating freshness
Why it was difficult
Schools can appear, disappear, or change between snapshots, and the current source no longer exposes every contact and enrollment field found in the earlier data. Replacing the old file would erase useful history; silently carrying old fields forward would imply that they were current.
The response
Keep 2,500 currently listed U.S. schools, retain 245 U.S. records as no longer listed, and label 345 preserved international records as not checked. Tie supplemental details to the earlier snapshot and remind visitors to verify school information with the school or ACSI.
Make thousands of records understandable together
Why it was difficult
A long alphabetical list does not reveal geographic reach, accreditation patterns, grade coverage, or the scale represented by the directory. Independent filters can also leave users guessing which combinations still have results.
The response
Combine national metrics, distribution summaries, school-name search, linked state and accreditation counts, grade-level filters, listing-status filters, bounded pagination, desktop tables, and mobile result cards. Each selection refreshes the matching totals and valid options.
Combine three sources without collapsing their meaning
Why it was difficult
A school can appear differently across national directories, campuses and system offices may be separate records, and accreditation or membership status can mean different things depending on the source.
The response
Keep source records in separate snapshots with namespaced identifiers, source dates, nullable shared fields, and bounded source details. Matching and de-duplication remain a reviewed future layer, so the evidence behind each record stays intact.
A clearer national view for families, leaders, and researchers.
Families exploring Christian education
Parents and caregivers trying to understand what private Christian-school options exist in a state or community.
Search by school name or geography, narrow by grade level or accreditation, and continue to the school's own website for current details.
Make a large national directory approachable while keeping the individual school and source organization as the authority for final decisions.
School, church, and association leaders
Leaders who want context for the broader Christian-school landscape beyond their own campus or local network.
See how schools are distributed, understand represented grade levels and accreditation categories, and identify comparable institutions for research.
Use national totals and connected filters to understand the source without assembling the directory themselves.
Education researchers and directory builders
Researchers examining private and Christian education across multiple national sources.
Move among three preserved source layers with explicit editions, stable identities, and source-specific details.
Compare broader coverage while keeping provenance and historical records intact for future matching and de-duplication.
Three substantial sources, separately preserved and qualified.
ACSI, AACS, and NCES stay separately labeled and queryable
Current and preserved records in the accepted August 2026 layer
Accepted school listings from the 2024 national directory
Accepted private-school records from the 2021–22 survey
Includes Cross Lanes Christian School with page provenance
West Virginia records in the accepted national survey layer
The directory makes three substantial views of private education accessible in one product. Choose the source that fits the question, narrow by geography or supported source fields, and move into school-level research without downloading or repairing the original files.
It also creates a disciplined foundation for a later unique-school view. That next layer will require reviewed source-aware matching, careful treatment of campuses and system offices, and de-duplication without erasing provenance or combining enrollment totals from different years.
Multi-source public-data engineering and product design: extracting directory and survey sources, preserving record-level provenance and source meaning, and turning distinct school datasets into a responsive research experience.
See the work