US School Ratings currently publishes 118,199 public-education profiles: 98,950 schools and 19,249 districts or other local education agencies. That scale is useful only if readers can see what sits behind it, so this is a field-by-field audit of our published dataset.
98,950
school records
19,249
agency records
5
federal data layers
The records come mainly from the US Department of Education. We join directory, enrollment, staffing, geography, finance, and civil-rights files by stable NCES identifiers. We do not fill missing federal values with guesses, and the presence of a field is not an endorsement or a quality judgment.
“District” records do not all describe ordinary districts
The federal agency directory includes traditional districts, independent charter agencies, service agencies, specialized systems, supervisory unions, and state- or federally operated agencies. Treating all 19,249 records as interchangeable districts would distort comparisons.
| Federal agency type | Records | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Regular district (not in a supervisory union) | 13,131 | 68.2% |
| Independent charter agency | 4,206 | 21.9% |
| Service agency | 755 | 3.9% |
| Specialized public-school district | 440 | 2.3% |
| Other local education agency | 232 | 1.2% |
| State-operated agency | 194 | 1.0% |
| Regular district (in a supervisory union) | 173 | 0.9% |
| Supervisory union | 114 | 0.6% |
| Federally operated agency | 4 | 0.0% |
That distinction affects the site itself. General district benchmarks are limited to regular public-school districts. An independent charter agency or regional service agency can still have a useful profile, but it should not silently enter a peer group built for conventional local systems.
Coverage is strong—but it is not uniform
A blank can mean the source did not report the measure, the field did not apply, or no compatible record joined for that school. It does not mean zero. Here is the actual field availability in the current school collection:
| Field or field group | Schools with data | Coverage | Source year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enrollment | 96,948 | 98.0% | 2024–25 |
| Student–teacher ratio | 91,840 | 92.8% | 2024–25 |
| Locale | 98,219 | 99.3% | 2024–25 |
| Map coordinates | 98,219 | 99.3% | 2024–25 |
| School website | 69,541 | 70.3% | 2025–26 directory |
| Charter flag | 95,517 | 96.5% | 2025–26 |
| Virtual flag | 97,119 | 98.1% | 2024–25 where available; otherwise 2021–22 |
| Support-staff fields | 91,065 | 92.0% | 2021–22 CRDC |
| Program fields | 91,065 | 92.0% | 2021–22 CRDC |
Two patterns deserve attention. First, core directory and geographic fields cover more than 98% of school records, while websites cover about 70.3%. Second, program and support-staff fields come from the older Civil Rights Data Collection. Those fields are valuable leads, but they should always be confirmed with the school.
One profile contains several data vintages
Federal education files are not released as one synchronized database. A current directory can identify an open school while its newest available finance or civil-rights measures are several years older.
| Layer | Vintage used here | What it contributes |
|---|---|---|
| CCD directory | 2025–26 preliminary | Identity, status, address, contact details, grade span |
| CCD membership and staff | 2024–25 | Enrollment, teacher full-time equivalents, ratios, demographics |
| NCES EDGE | 2024–25 | Locale, county, metro area, latitude and longitude |
| District finance (F-33) | Fiscal year 2023 | Revenue and expenditure measures |
| CRDC | 2021–22 | Support staff and selected program-access indicators |
This is not a flaw that can be solved by labeling the whole profile “2026 data.” It is a property of the source system. Each page therefore carries source years at the measure level, and our methodology lists the release behind each layer. The companion guide on school data vintages explains how to compare mixed-year fields safely.
What the database can answer well
- Identity and structure: whether two similarly named schools are actually the same institution, their district relationships, grade spans, and federal identifiers.
- Descriptive scale: enrollment, staffing ratios, district size, and how those measures compare with carefully defined peers.
- Geographic context: state, county, locale category, metro area, and approximate map position.
- Research leads: reported program and support-staff fields that a family can take to a current school source for confirmation.
What it cannot establish
No federal row can tell you whether a particular teacher is a good fit, whether a program has seats next fall, how welcoming a child will find the campus, or whether an address is currently assigned to a school. The files also do not turn correlation into cause: a spending figure, enrollment change, or staffing ratio cannot by itself explain student outcomes.
Our own calculated comparisons are descriptive. They make a large dataset easier to read; they do not replace visits, official boundary tools, current course catalogs, or direct questions to the school and district.
Reproducibility notes
Counts on this page are calculated at build time from the same records that create the public profiles, not copied into article prose. The snapshot includes schools and agencies listed in the current imported directory. Coverage percentages use all 98,950 school records as the denominator, including records for which a particular field is not applicable or not reported.
Sources and methodology
- NCES Common Core of Data files — directory, membership, staffing, and district finance releases.
- NCES EDGE — geographic and locale data.
- Civil Rights Data Collection — school programs and support-staff measures.
- US School Ratings methodology and data coverage report — joining, validation, calculations, and known limits.
