Department of Education
Dataset Description
The National
Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) Education Demographic and
Geographic Estimate (EDGE) program develops annually updated school district
boundary composite files that include public elementary, secondary, and unified
school district boundaries clipped to the U.S. shoreline. School districts
are single-purpose administrative units designed by state and local officials
to organize and provide public education for local residents. District
boundaries are collected for NCES by the U.S. Census Bureau to support
educational research and program administration, and the boundaries are
essential for constructing district-level estimates of the number of children
in poverty.
The
Census Bureau’s School District Boundary Review program (SDRP) ( https://www.census.gov/geo/partnerships/sdrp.html )
obtains the boundaries, names, and grade ranges from state officials, and
integrates these updates into Census TIGER/Line. Although the Census Bureau
updates TIGER/Line every year, the SDBR is a biennial update conducted on the
odd-numbered years, therefore district boundaries for a given school year
persist in TIGER for two years (e.g., boundaries for the 2015-2016 school year
are included in TIGER/Line 2016 and 2017). Census TIGER boundaries include
legal maritime buffers for coastal areas by default, but the NCES composite
file removes these buffers to facilitate broader use and cleaner cartographic
representation. The NCES EDGE program collaborates with the U.S. Census
Bureau’s Education Demographic, Geographic, and Economic Statistics (EDGE) Branch
to develop the composite school district files. The inputs for this data layer
were developed from Census TIGER/Line 2016 and represent boundaries reported
for the 2015-2016 school year. For more information about NCES school district
boundary data, see: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/edge/Geographic/DistrictBoundaries .
Organization: Department of Education
Organization URL: https://catalog.data.gov/organization/ed
Last updated: 2026-05-12T12:49:04.518489
Tags: 0ee4621b-38be-46bb-8360-219726022a58, United States, boundaries, elementary-school-district, geospatial, polygon, school-district, secondary-school-district, u-s, unified-school-district, united-states, us