PolicyMap & Niche

Description:

PolicyMap calculated the shortest straight-line distance (within 50 miles and the same state) from where residents live to the nearest public school with an overall Niche grade of A+, A or A-. Distances are shown for all schools and separately for pre-K, elementary, middle and high schools. PolicyMap measures from each block group’s 2020 population-weighted center, as published by the U.S. Census Bureau, not its geographic center. In large or irregularly shaped areas, the geographic center can fall in a lake, a forest or outside the area entirely, so the population-weighted center better reflects where people actually live. Only schools in the same state and within 50 miles are considered. Distances are “as the crow flies” and don’t account for roads, terrain or bodies of water. This analysis does not take into account political boundaries or catchment areas within states that may make a public school inaccessible. Census tract values are a population-weighted average of the distances for the block groups within each tract, so block groups with more residents count more. Block groups with no qualifying school within 50 miles are left out of their tract’s average. Areas with no residents, or with no qualifying school within 50 miles, are shown as Insufficient Data. A tract may show an average distance even if no high-performing schools are within its boundaries, as the metric reflects proximity to nearby schools rather than the presence within the tract. Each tract also has a coverage flag: No Population, None Within 50 Miles, Partial Coverage (some of its block groups have a qualifying school within 50 miles and some don’t) or School Nearby (every populated block group has one).

Niche is a platform that provides rankings for schools based on public data and user reviews. PolicyMap licenses Niche ratings for Pre-K through 12th grade schools. Niche-generated fields reflect the data available at the time of licensing, while the other fields are sourced from recent public-use datasets, such as those from the U.S. Department of Education. The Overall Rating and Academic Rating are based on Niche’s proprietary algorithms and follow a grading scale from A+ to D-. If a school’s coordinates fall outside its listed county or state, PolicyMap will re-geocode the address. Schools are excluded from the map if their address is missing or cannot be geocoded. Niche’s methodology includes a Bayesian adjustment to account for confidence in user-submitted data, standardized z-scores for comparison, and factor weighting based on both statistical analysis and user priorities. Schools missing over 50% of the weighted factors are excluded from rankings or only receive a grade to ensure reliability.

More information about Niche School Ratings can be found here.