This is a script that uses publicly available software - made available by the Chicago Public Schools system - to pull information about public schools in the city of Chicago. For more information about the REST APIs available, you can visit here: https://api.cps.edu/.
Run this script to make a CSV file readable by any spreadsheet program. Currently, as an example, the script is set to filter for:
- High schools
- With Graduation Stats
- With Graduation Rates above 80%
- With College Enrollment Stats
- With College Enrollment Rates above 75%
- With Swim Teams
In order to run this script, you will need:
- The Python language runtime installed on your computer (http://www.python.org)
To get started:
-
Download the script named:
get_cps_info.py -
Open a terminal or command prompt and go to the directory where you placed the file.
-
Run the following command
python get_cps_info.py. Note that the initial data download takes a few seconds to complete, so be patient, this script generally completes in a few seconds. You should see the following output after it completes:
High Schools: 173
With Grad Rate Data: 136
Grad Rate > 80%: 90
With College Enrollment Data: 89
College Enrollment Rate > 75%: 25
With Swim Program: 13
got here
If you see the above output, you should also be able to open a newly-created file named cps_qualifying_list.csv.
The CSV file contains a list of schools that match the criteria specified by each filter in the Python script.
Not being from Chicago originally, my wife and I found this very helpful in whittling down the list of CPS high schools to consider for our kid. If you look at all the data returned, you can tweak the python script to filter on all kinds of information about the schools.
Hope this helps other parents discovering the Chicago Public Schools system