Our reporters mined a trove of data that revealed detailed demographic information about private schools. That helped us find illuminating stories about how those schools divide communities.

ProPublica decided to create a Private School Demographics database, which we launched this week, that anyone, anywhere can use to look up a school and view the years of data we were relying on for our reporting.

The story behind this new tool began with our need to understand how many segregation academies still operate — and where. We wanted to focus only on those that continue to create segregating forces in their communities, not the ones whose student bodies had come to reflect their local areas.