The National Center for Education Statistics\u2019 (NCES) Education Demographic and Geographic Estimates (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 special-purpose governments and 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\u2019s School District Review Program (SDRP) (https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/sdrp.html) obtains the boundaries, names, and grade ranges from state officials, and integrates these updates into Census TIGER. 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 inputs for this data layer were developed from Census TIGER/Line 2025 and represent boundaries reported for the 2024-2025 school year. For more information about NCES school district boundary data, see: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/edge/Geographic/DistrictBoundaries.
Collections are available for the following years:
All information contained in this file is in the public domain. Data users are advised to review NCES program documentation and feature class metadata to understand the limitations and appropriate use of these data.
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