Insights by Acture

Help & user guide

Everything you need to turn the New York State School Report Card into peer comparisons, rankings, and visualizations.

What is Insights by Acture?

Insights by Acture is an analytics tool built on the New York State Education Department (NYSED) School Report Card. The raw Report Card holds millions of figures for ~700 districts and ~4,500 schools across eight school years (2017–18 through 2024–25). Insights makes that data answerable in seconds:

Compare fairly. Every school or district is measured against a peer group you control — matched on wealth/need, size, and geography — instead of a statewide average that mixes very different communities.
Rank & filter. Order every district or school in the state by any metric, then narrow by need category, county, subgroup, and year.
Visualize. See distributions, correlations, multi-year trends, and a geographic map — each with your focus district and its peers highlighted.
Save & revisit. Bookmark districts, build named comparisons, and save chart views to a personal dashboard.

Getting started

From the home page, type a school or district name into the search box and pick a result.
On that Report Card page, review the headline metrics and the peer group table beneath them. Tune the peer filters if you want a tighter or looser comparison set.
Jump to Explore to rank the whole state, or Visualize to chart any metric with your district highlighted.
Optional: create an account to save districts, comparisons, and chart views to a dashboard.

Search a school or district

The search box (home page and the top of most pages) matches on name. Start typing — “Chappaqua”, “Buffalo”, “PS 8” — and choose from the live results. District results are labeled separately from schools. Selecting a result opens its Report Card page.

Tip: Many districts share a common word (“Central”, “Union Free”). Add the place name to disambiguate, e.g. “Valley Stream 13”.

Reading a Report Card page

A Report Card page summarizes one school or district. From top to bottom you will find:

Headline metric cards — proficiency, graduation, attendance and the like, each shown with the value and how it compares to the peer group. Cards with a ▾ expand to a breakdown — by grade (3–8) or, for graduation, by cohort (4-Year, 5-Year, 6-Year, Combined), each with its own peer comparison.
Trend charts — multi-year lines so you can see direction, not just a single snapshot.
Build your peer group — filters (need category, county, enrollment range, subgroup, year) that recompute the peer set live, with a running peer count.
Peers in this group — the focus entity alongside its peers in a sortable table.
Accountability — the school/district’s NYSED accountability designation and supporting detail, where reported.
Enrollment & demographics — race/ethnicity, gender, and program (SWD, ELL, economically disadvantaged) shares, plus the multi‑year total‑enrollment trend (when enrollment data is loaded).
Equity gaps — each subgroup compared to All Students for a metric, shown next to the gap typical of your peer group, so you can see whether a gap is wider or narrower than peers’.
Advanced coursework (AP/IB) — AP/IB pass rate (exams scoring 3+ on AP / 4+ on IB), exams per 100 students, courses offered, and the score distribution, by subgroup. AP/IB data lags one year (latest 2023–24).

A dash (—) means a value was suppressed or not reported (see Glossary), not zero.

Board presentation

Every Report Card has a 📊 Board presentation button that opens a print‑ready slide deck for the entity you’re viewing, carrying the peer group, year, and subgroup you’ve selected.

The slides: a cover; strengths & areas to watch (top/bottom quartile vs. peers); a scorecard vs. peers; multi‑year trends; what changed this year; equity focus (ELA & Math); accountability status; who we serve (demographics); advanced coursework (AP/IB); and the peer methodology.
Make a board packet: use Print → Save as PDF — one landscape slide per page.
The deck reflects whatever peer filters, year, and subgroup are active on the Report Card you launched it from.

Peer groups, explained

A peer group is the set of “similar” districts your focus is measured against. By default a peer is a district that shares the focus’s:

Need/Resource Capacity (N/RC) category — NYSED’s official wealth-vs-need classification (Low Need, Average Need, High Need urban/suburban/rural, the Big 5 city districts, etc.).
Enrollment size — within ±40% of the focus’s pupil count by default.

The focus district itself is excluded, and geography is not constrained by default (a peer can be anywhere in the state). Peers are deliberately not chosen by test scores, so the comparison never becomes circular.

On Visualize, once you set a focus district you can retune the definition with the Peer group controls: N/RC (same as focus / any), the enrollment size band (±20% to ±100%, or any size), and county (any / same as focus). The peer count updates next to the focus field as you change them.

Explore & rank

Explore ranks every district (or school) in New York by a single metric. Choose the metric, level (districts/schools), demographic subgroup, year, and sort order, then narrow the field by Need/Resource group and county. Results appear as a ranked bar chart and a sortable table; each row links to that entity’s Report Card page. Signed-in users can name and save the current configuration as a report, and anyone can export the full ranking to CSV.

Visualize: the four charts

Visualize charts any metric across the whole state, with an optional focus district and its peers highlighted. Use the tabs to switch between four chart types; the controls below adapt to each. Set a focus by typing a district name or 12-digit entity code into the Focus field — a “→ Name · N peers” confirmation appears when it resolves.

Histogram

Shows the distribution of a metric: each bar is the number of districts whose value falls in that range. When a focus is set, a red reference line marks where your district sits, and the blue segment of each bar is the count of peers in that range — so you can see your district’s position and how the peer cohort clusters. The X axis is the metric; the Y axis is the number of districts.

Scatter plot

Plots two metrics against each other (pick an X metric and a Y metric) — for example proficiency vs. per-pupil spending — to reveal correlations. Each dot is a district; the focus is red, peers are blue, others are muted. Click any dot to open that district’s Report Card.

Heat map

A focus-centric grid: columns are school years, and rows are one of three dimensions you choose — your focus + peers, subgroups, or grades 3–8. Each cell is colored on a red→green “worse→better” ramp (oriented to the metric’s direction), so multi-year and cross-group patterns jump out. Grey cells are suppressed/no-data; the legend shows the value range.

District map

A choropleth of every New York school district, shaded by the selected metric on a sequential scale (darker = better, oriented to the metric). Your focus district is outlined in red and its peers in dark outline; hover any district for its name and value, and click to open its Report Card. New York City is shaded as one citywide unit. The legend explains the shading and the value range.

Note: The map is districts-only (school boundaries are not published), so the Level, N/RC, and County filters are hidden on the Map tab.

Saved views & your dashboard

Signed-in users can save the current Visualize view — chart type, metric, year, subgroup, focus district, and peer definition — from the “Save to dashboard” bar. Saved views appear on your dashboard as labeled cards that link straight back to the exact chart. When you are looking at a view you have already saved, the bar shows a ★ Saved indicator with an Unsave button. The dashboard also holds your bookmarked districts/schools and saved side-by-side comparisons.

Limit: you can keep up to 50 saved graphs. The save bar shows a running count (e.g. “12 / 50 saved”); at the limit it prompts you to remove one from your dashboard before saving another.

Side-by-side compare

Side-by-side places several schools or districts in one table, metric by metric, for a direct head-to-head. Add entities by search; signed-in users can name and save the comparison to their dashboard, and the table can be exported to CSV or PDF.

Exporting (CSV & PDF)

Look for the ⬇ CSV and 🖨 Print / PDF buttons on the data pages:

Explore → CSV downloads the full filtered ranking (not just the rows shown on screen) — one row per district/school, with county, need group, enrollment, and the metric value. Opens cleanly in Excel or Google Sheets.
Compare → CSV downloads the side-by-side table — one row per metric, one column per entity.
Print / PDF (on Explore, Compare, and any Report Card) opens your browser’s print dialog, where you can choose “Save as PDF.” The printout drops the navigation, filters, and buttons so you get just the content.

Tip: a CSV export always reflects your current filters (metric, subgroup, year, county, need group), so set those first, then download.

Controls that apply as you go

Filter and criteria controls apply as soon as you change them — there’s no need to hit an Update button. Pick a value from a dropdown and the page refreshes immediately; type into a text field (like the focus district) and it applies when you press Enter or click away. The Update button is still there as a fallback if JavaScript is off.

Accounts & sign-in

An account is optional — all data and charts are usable signed-out. Signing in (email + password) unlocks saving: bookmarked entities, named comparisons, and saved chart views, all collected on your dashboard. Create an account or log in.

Glossary

N/RC (Need/Resource Capacity): NYSED’s classification of a district’s ability to meet student needs with local resources. Categories include Low Need, Average Need, High Need (urban/suburban and rural), and the large city districts. Insights uses N/RC as the primary “wealth/need” axis for peer matching.
Subgroup: A demographic slice of students (e.g. All Students, Economically Disadvantaged, English Language Learners, Students with Disabilities, and race/ethnicity groups). Most metrics can be filtered by subgroup.
AP/IB pass rate: The share of Advanced Placement / International Baccalaureate exams scored 3 or higher (AP) or 4 or higher (IB) — the common college‑credit threshold.
Exams per 100 students: AP/IB exams taken per 100 enrolled students — an access measure (a student taking three exams counts three times).
CCCR: College, Career & Civic Readiness — NYSED’s composite of how prepared graduates are for what comes next.
Proficiency: The percent of tested students scoring at Level 3 or 4 (proficient) on a state assessment — e.g. Grades 3–8 ELA/Math, science, or a Regents exam.
Suppression (the “—” dash): NYSED withholds values for very small groups to protect student privacy, and some aggregate bands are withheld even when individual grades exist. A dash means “not reported,” never zero.
Attendance / Chronic absenteeism: Attendance is reported as an index; chronic absenteeism is the percent of students absent 10% or more of enrolled days (lower is better).
Focus district: The single district you center a Visualize chart on. It is highlighted on every chart and anchors the peer group.
Entity code: NYSED’s 12-digit identifier for a school or district. You can paste one into the Focus field, or just type a name.

Data, sources & caveats

Source: NYSED School Report Card public data, school years 2017–18 through 2024–25.
AP/IB & enrollment: advanced‑coursework figures come from NYSED’s AP/IB database (school years 2018–19 → 2023–24, one year behind the SRC); demographic composition comes from NYSED’s separate Enrollment database. Both are optional add‑ons to the core Report Card data.
The 2019–20 (COVID) year: federal and state testing was waived that spring, so that year carries only graduation, spending, and staffing figures — assessment metrics (ELA/Math/Science/Regents) are absent and their charts skip it.
District boundaries: U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line school-district shapes, joined to NYSED districts via the NCES crosswalk. NYC is one citywide shape; a handful of special-act and institutional districts have no map geometry.
Unofficial: Insights by Acture is an independent analytics tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by NYSED. Always confirm figures against the official Report Card for high-stakes use.

Still stuck? Return to the home page or start a comparison from any Report Card.