If you’re looking for a way to judge a local bar or restaurant, there’s plenty of online resources to do so. Now, you can also judge and compare your local D.C. public schools.

Yesterday the District’s public school system launched an online tool which parents and residents can use to judge schools based on a number of factors, including demographics, facilities and student performance. More importantly, though, the tool allows users to compare one school against another.

According to a Post article on the new tool, school officials hope that it will help parents decide what schools might be best for their kids and stem the ongoing losses to the city’s growing charter schools:

The scorecards represent the school system’s attempt to expand transparency in an increasingly competitive education marketplace. A steadily growing charter school sector now serves more than 40 percent of the city’s public students. Officials expressed the hope that the deeper statistical profiles will compel parents to take a more holistic view of schools they might otherwise overlook.

More data is great and good, of course, but how it is used and presented is still an issue. Expulsion and suspension rates, for one, only come into play once a student has been out of school for at least 11 days.

D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson appeared on WUSA9 yesterday to discuss the tool: