Abstract: To assess seismic performance of primary and secondary school buildings reasonably and make decision on maintenance and reinforcement effectively, a seismic performance assessment method based on the life-cycle cost was proposed. The building seismic performance index is expressed as the function of the expected loss after-earthquake and the total cost. With references of the society acceptable risk research results, the seismic capacity of buildings is defined as 4 ranks. Two types of primary and secondary buildings were selected to assess the seismic performance of buildings based on the above method. Results show that the method proposed is applicable to evaluate the seismic performance of primary and secondary schools buildings.