Schools Methodology (v1)
Version 1.0.0 · Published 2026-06-07
What this is
WiseAddress surfaces official Florida Department of Education school grades. We do not measure or predict your child's education outcome. We are an editorial screening index, not a measurement. The tier label on your report tells you the shape of the grades for schools in your district. The decision about whether a specific school is right for your child is yours to make.
This methodology page is the source of truth for the school-zone-quality Question that produces every Schools tier on every report.
Data sources
- FL DOE 2024-25 School Grades: A through F annual letter grade per school, published in the FL DOE accountability report (the
SchoolGrades25.xlsxfile at fldoe.org). Loaded statewide for all 3,464 schools across 75 districts (67 FL counties plus special districts like Florida Virtual School, lab schools, and the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind). - FL DOE proficiency data: per-school percent proficient in English Language Arts (reading) and Mathematics, sourced from the same xlsx file (FL FAST assessment results). This is part of the composite index, not separate.
- FL DOE charter + Title I flags: from the same xlsx. The charter flag is surfaced as supporting context; Title I is currently informational only.
What we DON'T use, and why
WiseAddress does not use GreatSchools ratings. The GreatSchools methodology has been credibly criticized for amplifying segregation effects: schools with predominantly white and affluent enrollments rate disproportionately well regardless of absolute academic measures. See the Brookings 2020 analysis and Chalkbeat reporting on the topic. Our position: we surface the official state ratings, augment them with proficiency data, and publish our own transparent composite index. We do not amplify a methodology we find indefensible.
The WiseAddress composite index
For each school we compute a 0-100 composite from inputs you can verify:
composite = (0.6 × grade_score) + (0.4 × proficiency_average)
where grade_score is the FL DOE letter grade rescaled to 100 (A=100, B=75, C=50, D=25, F=0) and proficiency_average is the mean of reading + math percent proficient. This is a WiseAddress composite, not an official measure. We publish the formula here so any analyst can reproduce or critique it.
Tier labels (descriptive, not evaluative)
Your Schools tier on every report uses one of these descriptive labels:
| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
D-OR-F-ZONED | At least one school in your district at a level relevant to your household received a FL DOE 2024-25 letter grade of D or F. |
C-OR-MIXED | At least one C-graded school is in your district at a relevant level, but no D or F at relevant levels. |
ALL-B-OR-ABOVE | Every school at levels relevant to your household is graded B or above. |
VOUCHER-ADJUSTED | Your profile indicates voucher / private school intent. The public-school zone tier is informational only; the FL DOE grades are surfaced for transparency but do not weight your Family Fit subscore. |
NOT-RESOLVABLE | The address is outside Florida or the county_fips could not be matched. No school tier is surfaced. |
We deliberately use descriptive labels, not evaluative ones like SEVERE or BAD. The reason: a D-rated school today may improve to B next year. Calling a property SEVERE because of a state letter grade implies a WiseAddress judgment about the property. Calling it D-OR-F-ZONED is a description of the data. We will not turn an editorial screening into a causal claim.
Age-weighted aggregation
We combine elementary, middle, and high school grades into one tier using weights that depend on the oldest child's age in your profile:
| Oldest child age | Elementary weight | Middle weight | High weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-5 | 55% | 30% | 15% |
| 6-10 | 50% | 30% | 20% |
| 11-13 | 20% | 50% | 30% |
| 14-18 | 10% | 20% | 70% |
| Unknown | 50% | 30% | 20% |
The dealbreaker tier (D-OR-F-ZONED) fires when there is a D or F at a level whose weight is at least 30%. This preserves the buy-killer signal for the schools that actually matter to your household: a D at the high school does NOT fire a young family's alarm; a D at the elementary does.
Voucher / FES handling
Florida's universal voucher program (Family Empowerment Scholarship, FES) is available statewide for K-12 households. If your profile indicates intends_voucher_or_private = true, the WiseAddress Schools tier is overridden to VOUCHER-ADJUSTED regardless of the underlying public-school grades. The full district grade distribution is still shown for transparency, but the public zone is informational only and does not weight your Family Fit subscore.
v1 limitation: district-level fallback
WiseAddress v1 surfaces school grades at the district level, not at the parcel-zoned-school level. Florida's 67 county school districts each publish their attendance zone GIS data on different schedules and in different formats; some publish via ArcGIS REST (Hillsborough, Leon, Miami-Dade), others publish only PDF maps requiring manual digitization (Manatee). Parcel-level resolution requires per-county adapters that we are shipping as v1.1+ work, one county at a time.
In the meantime, the v1 tier surfaces district-level risk: if any school in your district at a relevant level is graded D or F, your tier shows D-OR-F-ZONED. Your specific zoned schools may all be A; v1 cannot tell. Always verify your specific zoned schools with your district before making a buying decision.
v1 deferrals
- Parcel-level zoning: v1.1+, per-county. Manatee, Sarasota, Hillsborough, and Miami-Dade are the next targets.
- Teacher vacancy rates: FL DOE Bureau of Educator Recruitment publishes this annually. We will surface it as a one-letter downgrade modifier when vacancy exceeds 20%. v1.1.
- AP / IB course counts: relevant for gifted-kid households. v1.1.
- Charter co-location: when a charter shares the zoned school building, resources can strain. We will surface both schools when applicable, starting with a curated list for Sarasota and Miami-Dade. v1.1.
- School lat/lon + addresses: not in the FL DOE annual feed; NCES Common Core of Data is the source. v1.1.
- Bus routing time: a 90-minute bus ride to an A school is materially worse than a 10-minute ride to a B school. Per-county bus route ingestion. v1.2.
Verb policy for verdict prose
The Question's verdict prose says “the FL DOE assigned [school] a grade of D as of 2024-25”. It does NOT say “the school is bad”. School grades are reissued annually and can change; the verdict prose links to the current FL DOE accountability dashboard so the reader can verify the most recent rating themselves.
Adversarial review
Before shipping v1, the design memo was sent to two outside reasoning models (DeepSeek chat + DeepSeek reasoner) for adversarial review. The decisions to use descriptive labels instead of SEVERE, to use age-weighted aggregation, to suppress on voucher intent, and to not use GreatSchools were all sharpened by the review. The verbatim reviews are committed at docs/refactor/schools-subscore-review-deepseek*.md.