Data sources & methodology
SchoolScope USA republishes official NCES files for school year 2024–25, processed with published, repeatable rules. Data last refreshed 2026-11-06.
Files in this release
| Dataset | File | Rows | Fingerprint (SHA-256, first 16) |
|---|---|---|---|
| CCD School Directory | ccd_sch_029_2425_w_1a_073025.zip | 102,178 | 39326da788aa3223 |
| CCD School Membership | ccd_sch_052_2425_l_1a_073025.zip | 11,172,292 | 4a7f660c5fc5eaae |
| CCD School Staff | ccd_sch_059_2425_l_1a_073025.zip | 100,237 | a52dce73acb312ec |
| CCD School Characteristics | ccd_sch_129_2425_w_1a_073025.zip | 100,237 | f5a980377adc2e56 |
| CCD School Lunch Program Eligibility | ccd_sch_033_2425_l_1a_073025.zip | 469,350 | 697e3d6a2995aa18 |
| EDGE Public School Geocodes | EDGE_GEOCODE_PUBLICSCH_2425.zip | 102,178 | 9dc51ecd5cdf6e38 |
Publisher: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, US Department of Education. Federal statistical data files are public; please cite NCES when reusing figures.
Scope
The 50 states and the District of Columbia. Territories and Bureau of Indian Education schools are published by NCES but not yet included here. Schools with an operating status (open, new, added, changed boundary or reopened) are counted; closed, inactive and future schools are excluded.
Processing rules
- Identifiers. Schools are keyed by the 12-digit NCES school ID and districts by the 7-digit NCES district ID, kept as text so leading zeros survive. Files are joined only on these IDs, never on names.
- Enrollment. The NCES total that excludes adult education is used. Where it is absent, the unit total less adult education, or the sum of detailed counts, is used. In this release: derived 98,136, unit 0, sumCatA 0, none 156, raceSexSubtotal 0.
- District and state totals are sums of school records, labeled as such. They can differ from totals a district or state reports itself.
- Ratios are enrollment divided by teacher FTE, rounded to one decimal. Values below 2 or above 60 are flagged as unusual (723 schools) but not changed.
- Missing values. Blank or negative reserved codes in NCES files are shown as “Not reported” or “Not applicable”, never as zero.
- Years are never mixed within one figure. Where a page shows data from different years, each year is printed.
Privacy protection
Only aggregate counts published by NCES are used. Demographic groups with fewer than 10 students at a school or district are hidden, and when exactly one group is hidden the next-smallest group is hidden too, so the hidden value cannot be calculated from the total. This rule is SchoolScope's own and is stricter than the source files require. We never try to recover values a source has suppressed.
Validation in this release
- Operating schools: 99,073; districts with an operating school: 18,222.
- Schools with reported enrollment: 98,136; with teacher FTE: 95,043; with a locale code: 99,073.
- 145,656 membership rows did not match an in-scope directory school (territories/BIE or closed records).
Update cadence
NCES releases the Common Core of Data once a year, roughly 12–18 months after the school year ends, sometimes with a later corrected version. SchoolScope refreshes when a new final file is released.