US Education Data Search

Apify Actor that queries the SIP Public Data Gateway over HTTPS — no browser, no scraping of government portals. Provide search terms (institution names, district names, keywords) and the Actor queries up to 16 US education data products in parallel, returning normalized rows across four toggleable categories.

What it does

• Searches 16 US education data products exposed through SIP, grouped into four optional categories you can enable or disable per run.
• All product calls run in parallel per search term using asyncio.gather — a 16-product run completes in roughly one round-trip instead of sixteen.
• Enriches every row with _product_id, _source, _search_term, and _collected_at metadata for downstream filtering.
• Respects SIP's 200-result cap per product call; set maxResultsPerSource between 1 and 200.

Data sources

Category	Product key	SIP product_id	Coverage
College & University	college_scorecard	us_edu_college_scorecard	Federal — costs, earnings, graduation, debt for ~6,000 US colleges
College & University	ny_cuny_enrollment	us_edu_ny_cuny_enrollment	City University of New York enrollment by campus and program
College & University	ny_suny_campuses	us_edu_ny_suny_campuses	State University of New York campus directory
College & University	co_financial_aid	us_edu_co_financial_aid	Colorado state financial aid awards
K-12 Performance	de_assessment	us_edu_de_assessment	Delaware state assessment scores by school
K-12 Performance	de_graduation	us_edu_de_graduation	Delaware graduation cohort rates
K-12 Performance	wa_assessment	us_edu_wa_assessment	Washington state assessment results
K-12 Performance	tx_graduation_rates	us_edu_tx_graduation_rates	Texas four-year graduation rates by district
K-12 Performance	ct_directory	us_edu_ct_directory	Connecticut school directory with district/address detail
Financials	ma_district_expenditure	us_edu_ma_district_expenditure	Massachusetts per-pupil district expenditure
Financials	ma_school_expenditure	us_edu_ma_school_expenditure	Massachusetts per-pupil school expenditure
Financials	wa_expenditure	us_edu_wa_expenditure	Washington state school expenditure by district
Financials	de_educator_salary	us_edu_de_educator_salary	Delaware educator salary schedule
Student Outcomes	wa_graduate_outcomes	us_edu_wa_graduate_outcomes	Washington post-secondary employment and wage outcomes
Student Outcomes	de_discipline	us_edu_de_discipline	Delaware student discipline incidents by school
Student Outcomes	ma_discipline	us_edu_ma_discipline	Massachusetts student discipline rates by school

Use cases

College research and selection

Search College Scorecard for cost of attendance, median earnings after graduation, and completion rates. Cross-reference CUNY or SUNY enrollment data to understand program scale at New York public institutions. Combine with Colorado financial aid data for aid availability analysis.

Education policy and benchmarking

Pull K-12 assessment scores and graduation rates across Delaware, Washington, and Texas to compare academic performance across districts or over time. Useful for policy researchers, think tanks, and education journalists tracking state-level outcomes.

School district analysis

Search district expenditure data from Massachusetts and Washington alongside performance metrics. Analyze spend-per-pupil relative to assessment outcomes for budget accountability work, grant applications, or legislative testimony.

Workforce and economic planning

Washington's graduate outcomes product links post-secondary programs to employment wages. Combine with College Scorecard earnings data to map educational pathways to regional labor market outcomes — relevant for workforce development agencies and economic development offices.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
searchTerms	string[]	—	Required. Institution names or keywords (e.g. ["University of New York", "Hartford"]).
includeCollegeData	boolean	true	College Scorecard, CUNY/SUNY enrollment, CO financial aid.
includeK12Performance	boolean	true	Assessment scores, graduation rates, school directory (DE, WA, TX, CT).
includeFinancials	boolean	false	District/school expenditures and educator salary (MA, WA, DE).
includeStudentOutcomes	boolean	false	Graduate employment outcomes and discipline records (WA, DE, MA).
maxResultsPerSource	integer	50	Per-product result cap (1–200; SIP gateway enforces 200 maximum).

Example input

{
  "searchTerms": ["University of New York", "Columbia"],
  "includeCollegeData": true,
  "includeK12Performance": false,
  "includeFinancials": false,
  "includeStudentOutcomes": false,
  "maxResultsPerSource": 100
}

Output

Each dataset item is a SIP search hit from one product, enriched with Actor metadata:

• Education fields (examples): institution_name, school_name, district_name, city, state, enrollment, graduation_rate, median_earnings, expenditure_per_pupil, assessment_score (exact field names vary by product schema).
• Actor metadata: _product_id, _source (product label key), _search_term, _collected_at (ISO-8601 UTC).

Example record — College Scorecard

{
  "institution_name": "City University of New York",
  "city": "New York",
  "state": "NY",
  "median_earnings": 42000,
  "admission_rate": 0.55,
  "graduation_rate": 0.48,
  "avg_net_price": 8500,
  "_product_id": "us_edu_college_scorecard",
  "_source": "college_scorecard",
  "_search_term": "University of New York",
  "_collected_at": "2026-04-08T10:00:00Z"
}

Example record — TX graduation rates

{
  "district_name": "Houston Independent School District",
  "state": "TX",
  "graduation_rate_4yr": 82.1,
  "cohort_year": 2023,
  "_product_id": "us_edu_tx_graduation_rates",
  "_source": "tx_graduation_rates",
  "_search_term": "Houston",
  "_collected_at": "2026-04-08T10:00:00Z"
}

Configuration

Set the SIP gateway key as an environment variable in the Apify Actor settings (mark as secret):

Variable	Description
SIP_API_KEY	SIP X-API-Key value. Mark as secret in Apify Actor environment variables.
SIP_API_BASE	Optional. Override gateway root URL. Default: https://sip.myskillstore.dev/api/v1/data.

For local testing only, you may pass sipApiKey in the Actor input JSON. Prefer environment variables on Apify so the key is not stored in run input.

Pricing reference

Approximate target pricing: ~$2 per 1,000 results combined (small per-run start fee plus per-result charge). Configure exact USD amounts in the Apify Actor Pricing tab. This README does not lock prices.

Local development

cd "/Users/kane/Projects/Apify Actors/sip-us-education-search"
python3.13 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt
export SIP_API_KEY="your-key"
mkdir -p storage/key_value_stores/default
echo '{"searchTerms":["University of New York"],"includeCollegeData":true,"includeK12Performance":true,"maxResultsPerSource":10}' \
  > storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json
apify run

Or run directly:

$SIP_API_KEY=your-key python -m src

(Requires INPUT.json under storage/key_value_stores/default/ when using Apify SDK conventions.)

Deploy

apify login
apify push

Use APIFY_TOKEN or CLI login — never commit tokens to source control.

Legal

You must comply with SIP terms of use, Apify terms of service, and all applicable data protection and privacy laws (including FERPA for student-level education data). This Actor is an API client to your own SIP gateway instance; you are responsible for lawful use of all downstream government and education data. Student-level records may carry additional legal obligations — consult legal counsel before processing personally identifiable information.

Use as MCP Tool (AI Agent Integration)

This Actor works as an MCP tool — AI agents (Claude, GPT, Cursor) can discover and run it automatically.

Quick setup (Claude Desktop / Cursor / VS Code)

Add to your MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"
      }
    }
  }
}

Then ask your AI: "Search for Stanford in US education databases"

Direct API call

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("lentic_clockss/us-education-search").call(
    run_input={"searchTerms": ["Stanford"], "maxResultsPerSource": 50}
)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

Other Data API Actors

• EU Energy & Education Data API
• Denmark Government Data API
• Australia Government Data API