Editorial Standards

Our Editorial Mission

SchoolsByCounty is a data-journalism site. Our job is to take the education statistics that the federal government already publishes — county-by-county graduation rates, per-pupil spending, public school records, district context, and enrollment — and present them in a form that someone comparing regional school systems or researching education trends can actually use. We are not an education advisory service. We do not recommend specific schools or districts, and we do not publish educational advice.

Every page on this site is grounded in a primary-source dataset from a U.S. government agency. Where we compute composite scores or rank counties, we publish the underlying formula on our methodology page. Where we draw on AI assistance for prose, we say so on this page and on the page itself.

Who Writes and Edits This Site

SchoolsByCounty is published and edited by Evan Brooks, Data Editor. The data editor documents the data pipeline, sets the methodology, reviews published prose for accuracy against the underlying data, and signs off on every methodology change. The data editor is not a licensed educator, school administrator, or education policy expert, and SchoolsByCounty does not present itself as an education advisory service. The data editor's role is the data-editor role: ensure statistics on this site match the source datasets, ensure prose stays inside what the data supports, and decline to publish anything that strays into recommendation territory.

Long-form features and reported pieces carry an explicit byline at the top of the article. Until we have a contract domain reviewer in place, the data editor reviews and signs off on every long-form piece. We are actively recruiting an education-data analyst or school-finance researcher to co-byline future school-decision features — if you have those credentials and want to write here, email editorial@schoolsbycounty.com.

Where Our Data Comes From

All county-level statistics on this site come from primary government sources. We do not republish data from third-party aggregators. Our active sources are:

• NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) — the federal registry of public schools and school districts. Provides enrollment, grade ranges, school type, district affiliation, and school-level demographics. We use the most recent annual release.
• NCES School District Finance Survey (F-33) — district-level revenue and expenditure data, including per-pupil spending. We use the most recent completed fiscal year available.

Each source's URL, release date, and pull date are documented on the methodology page. Source datasets are in the public domain (federal works) or published under licenses permitting commercial redistribution with attribution.

How We Use AI

Per-county pages on this site include a short, AI-generated narrative summary that contextualizes the statistics for that county. The narrative is produced by Claude (Anthropic) from the same source data shown in the statistics tables on the page. The data editor reviews the underlying prompt and spot-checks output before publication; the prompt is constrained to forbid school recommendations, causation claims, and any prose that goes beyond what the source statistics support.

We do not use AI to:

• Generate school recommendations, district recommendation lists, or educational advice.
• Invent statistics, sources, or quotes.
• Write methodology, editorial standards, or correction notices.
• Generate cause-and-effect claims about education outcomes that aren't grounded in the source data.

When the underlying data is updated, narratives are regenerated to stay consistent. AI-generated prose is always paired with the source statistics so readers can verify the numbers themselves.

Corrections Policy

If you spot a factual error — a wrong statistic, a misattributed source, a broken citation, an outdated enrollment count — email editorial@schoolsbycounty.com with the page URL and the specific issue. We aim to acknowledge every report within five business days and to publish a correction or update the page within ten business days for substantive issues.

Substantive corrections (changes to a statistic, methodology, or claim) are noted in a "Corrections" entry on the page itself with the date of the correction and a short description of what changed. Typographical and formatting fixes are made silently.

How SchoolsByCounty Is Funded

SchoolsByCounty is independently owned and operated. It is part of the ByCounty Network of data sites. Funding comes from two transparent sources:

• Display advertising served by Google AdSense and similar networks when ads are enabled. Ad placements are clearly labeled and do not influence editorial decisions or which counties we rank where.
• Affiliate links, only if added in the future. Sponsored links will be labeled clearly and will never determine which counties or schools we feature on data pages.

We do not accept paid content, sponsored statistics, or advertorials. No data source, advertiser, or affiliate has any influence over the methodology, score tables, or editorial choices on this site.

Update Cadence

Underlying data is refreshed annually, on the release schedule of each source (NCES CCD releases in fall; F-33 finance data lags by one fiscal year). Narratives are regenerated when the underlying data for a county changes. The methodology page displays its own "Last reviewed" date and changelog. This editorial-standards page was last reviewed on May 17, 2026.