Every school describes itself. Paste the paragraph yours uses — the About page, the Why-us section, the mission — and see which of its phrases also appear in hundreds of other schools' own descriptions, and which sentences are yours alone.
There’s no grade here. Schools share this vocabulary because they share the values — nearly every school here means it when it says community. The question this tool asks is narrower and more helpful: when a family reads your page next to three others, what is there for them to hold onto?
Nothing you paste leaves your browser. The comparison runs against a table of phrase frequencies built once from the public record.
Source: private schools’ own descriptions from federal filings · Analysis: Linda Haitani LLC
Paste your paragraph
Your school has
Compare with
About “faith-based” here: these are predominantly Christian academies, which file their own federal returns. Catholic parish and diocesan schools are not included — federal law exempts church-affiliated schools from filing, so they don’t appear in this public record.
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Your report
Shared vocabulary
of your content words sit inside phrases other schools also use
Shared phrases found
The sector's own pages
sharedwidely sharedsector-wide
Hover or tap any highlight to see how many schools use the phrase. Shares are the proportion of schools whose own description contains it.
The sentences that are yours
These carry the fewest shared phrases. If a family remembers one thing from your page, it will probably come from here.
Your most-shared phrases
The phrasebook for schools like yours
A card you can share
Add your school's name if you like — or leave it blank. Screenshot the card, or copy a plain-text summary.
Linda Haitani—
Can a family tell you apart?
shared vocabulary
Phrases we all use
The sentence that's ours
tellapart.haitani.org · from the public record · nothing leaves your browser
What this measures — and what it doesn't.
It measures shared vocabulary, not quality. Plain language can be distinctive, and distinctive language can be empty. A high share is not a verdict on your school; it is a note about the words on the page.
Who is in the comparison set matters. Roughly half of the schools here are faith-based — Christian academies file their own federal returns, while Catholic parish schools mostly don’t. Faith-based schools also describe themselves in very similar terms to one another, so their phrases run high in the shared lists.
The comparison set is private schools’ own self-descriptions — the mission and program language in their federal filings, and their homepage text. Schools that don’t file their own federal return (most Catholic parish and diocesan schools) aren’t represented.
A phrase counts as shared when at least 2 in 100 schools (2%) use it. Numbers, place names, and your school’s own name are ignored; so are phrases made only of words like school and students.
Where this goes next
I'm publishing more of these — small tools built from the public record, and what school leaders are finding when they run their own school through them. If you'd like them as they come, leave your email.