Parents who take a more proactive role in their children’s education now have a new tool to help them find out how Napa Valley schools measure up.

Recently unveiled by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a new “California School Finder” Web site holds a virtual yardstick to schools throughout the state, hosting information about teacher-student ratios, dropout rates and demographics.

The site also includes Academic Performance Index scores and indicates whether schools meet annual progress standards that factor into federal accountability under the No Child Left Behind Act — data regularly reported from school districts to the California Department of Education.

Created with the help of Microsoft and Google, the site covers all school levels and includes information about public, charter and alternative schools, according to the governor’s press office.

“School Finder is a fantastic resource that brings together information about California’s schools and makes it easily accessible for parents ... This vital information, compiled in one easy-to-navigate site, will increase school accountability and transparency and put power back into the hands of California parents,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement from his press office. “The facts of achievement for every school in California are now easily accessible — not buried in bureaucracy.”

Debbie Alter-Starr, a Yountville resident and parent of a seventh- and fifth-grade student, said ready access to school data is nothing new. The information is already available at existing Web sites like schooldigger.com and greatschools.net, which post data and statistics about schools throughout the nation, she said.

“It’s not like (the governor) is providing some service that hasn’t already covered by somebody. I agree that the government resources are harder to navigate, but the data is out there. ... If (this site) is what he’s calling accountability to parents, I don’t buy it,” she said.

Parents must keep abreast of schools’ proficiency scores and available resources to ensure that their children get an education best suited to their needs, she said, especially as the California public school system faces more than $4 billion in state budget cuts proposed by Schwarzenegger.

“The kind of accountability that I’m looking for is more than transparency of API scores,” she said, adding that she moved her child from one “small, better-performing” Napa Valley Unified School District school to another that had more to offer for advanced students.

Information posted on the California School Finder or other similar Web sites could prompt some parents to move their children to schools that meet federal Adequate Yearly Progress criteria and boast better API scores. But Elena Toscano, assistant superintendent of instruction at the 17,0000 student district, said test scores do not tell the full story about school quality.

“Any time parents make a decision based on API (scores), they should first visit the school. I advise parents to dig deeper and see what the campus offers,” she said.

The California School Finder Web site is available at www.schoolfinder.ca.gov.