About the data

Source

Every figure comes from the Common Core of Data, the annual census of United States public schools published by the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the U.S. Department of Education. The release used here is the 2023-24 school year.

Five files are used: the school directory, the local education agency directory, membership, free and reduced-price lunch eligibility, and school staff.

CCD is a work of the United States government. Under 17 U.S.C. 105 it is not subject to copyright in the United States.

What is measured and what is calculated

Fields marked calculated on a page are arithmetic over federal fields, and the formula is shown beside the value. Students per teacher is enrolment divided by full-time-equivalent teachers. Free or reduced-price lunch eligibility is the sum of the two eligibility counts divided by enrolment. Nothing else is derived, and no figure on this site is an estimate, a projection or a rating.

Withheld figures

NCES withholds some counts to protect the privacy of pupils in very small groups, and marks each one in the released file. This site inherits that decision rather than making its own. A withheld figure is shown as not published, with the reason named — never as a zero, which would be a different and false statement.

Nothing calculated from a withheld figure is published either. Where a school's lunch eligibility count was withheld, its eligibility rate is absent rather than approximated, and a district total that would have to skip a withheld school is not published at all, because a sum that quietly omitted it would understate the district.

Vintage

The 2023-24 release is the most recent complete CCD school year. A school that opened, closed or changed its grade span after that year will not show the change here until the next release. Operational status as NCES recorded it is on every school page.

What this site is not

It does not rank schools. It does not score them. It does not publish test results, reviews, opinions or advice, and it has no relationship with any school or district. It reproduces a federal dataset and calculates two ratios from it.