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PALM DESERT, CA and SAN FRANCISCO, CA — January 28 — /PRNewswire/ Each year, nearly 50 million parents search online for information about schools, but there are limited resources available to them. Today, Education.com announced a solution called SchoolFinder, http://www.schoolfinder.education.com. SchoolFinder is a new application that helps parents explore, compare, and evaluate a wide variety of schools-from elementary through high school — in order to find the best fit for their kids.

Making the right decision about a child’s school is one of the most important decisions a family can make. But, far too often, parents rely on anecdotal information. SchoolFinder hopes to change all of that by delivering a comprehensive nationwide database, combined with advanced search features and community reviews. Knowledge is power, and putting all of this information at parents’ fingertips gives families the necessary tools to select the school most appropriate for their children.

SchoolFinder gives parents access to a database of more than 100,000 public, private and charter schools nationwide, and allows them to evaluate schools based on academic performance, student and community demographics, and parent and teacher reviews. SchoolFinder will be available to the general public in mid February, 2008, and fully searchable at http://www.schoolfinder.education.com.

"Today’s parents turn to the Web to find information on everything from buying a car to dinner recipes," said Ronald Fortune, CEO of Education.com. "Until now, when researching a subject as important as school selection, parents have had very limited resources. We created SchoolFinder to provide parents with a powerful resource that makes the school selection process easy and collaborative."

SchoolFinder allows parents to do the following:

• Explore: Easily find information about all of the schools in a community, whether public, private, or charter. Parents can search in a number of different ways including: searching by address, city, state, county, and zip; searching by school name or school district; or searching by proximity and attribute (grade level, school type, rating, API score)
• Compare: Once the choices have been narrowed down, compare schools by distance, school type, academics, teachers, test performance, and demographics
• Evaluate Upon selecting a school, review detailed academic performance data, spending per pupil, teacher credentials, statistics and test scores, and sign up for monthly email updates on any school of interest

More than just test scores and school rankings, SchoolFinder provides parents with a well-rounded picture of what a particular school has to offer. SchoolFinder also has community features such as parent feedback, so anyone can hear about the good and the bad directly from a parent at a particular school.

"Education.com was chosen as one of DEMO 08’s presenting companies because SchoolFinder is an innovative solution to the problems facing today’s parents," said Chris Shipley, executive producer of the DEMO 08 conference. "Education.com has done a wonderful job of making educational information accessible to parents; SchoolFinder is another great example of what this company has to offer."

In its first release, SchoolFinder provides information for the ten most populous U.S. states, including California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, and Georgia. Data on the remaining states will be introduced soon. SchoolFinder’s search and compare capability will soon include school photos, neighborhood information and other features for all 50 states.

About Education.com

Education.com is a one-stop on-line destination for educational information and services for parents of children in preschool through grade 12. The site offers the ability for parents to easily find over 4,000 reference articles from the most respected non-profits, government agencies, and universities in the country, plus cutting edge editorial content, communities, and tools to answer education related questions. Education.com, headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., was founded in 2006. The company is backed by leading venture capital firms, Azure Capital and TeleSoft Partners. For more information, please visit http://www.education.com

About DEMO

Produced by Network World Event and Executive Forum, the semi-annual DEMO conference focuses on emerging technologies and new products, which are hand- selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow's cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launch pad events for accompanies such as Palm, E*Trade, Handspring and U.S. Robotics, helping them to secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. Each DEMO conference features approximately 70 new companies, products and technologies.
For more information, visit http://www.demo.com

Media Contact:
Kat Eden
Education.com
(650) 366-3380 x2218
pr@education.com