Education.com has launched a free mapping tool that allows users to view school district boundaries across the U.S. School Boundaries is a widget that can be incorporated into real estate websites and blogs.
It allows users to identify the school district a home falls within using a database of all 13,000 U.S. school districts. The widget tool also provides specific school assignments for homes in 55 percent of school districts nationwide.
The School Boundaries tool can be modified to specific zoom levels, sizes and colors, and delineates school district boundaries — and those of specific schools, where available — by color-shaded overlays on Google Maps.
The School Boundaries map can be displayed at a national level, with zoom capabilities that can display a single property.
For 55 percent of U.S. school districts, the search tool also supplies the school assignment for a home address, with a filter for elementary, middle and high schools, along with the assigned school’s test rating. The test ratings are compiled from education.com’s School Finder tool, which rates the school’s standardized test scores relative to those of others in the school’s state.
"The burden of finding out which district a house belongs to was, for the most part, on the user," said Seann Birkelund, an executive at education.com. The new widget, he said, provides a powerful tool for homebuyers and sellers who want clarity in the all-important metric of identifying assigned schools for individual homes.
The data for the widget is updated annually based on National Center for Education Statistics information.