NCES Common Core of Data, 2024-25 Preliminary Directory Files
The official directory of US public school districts and schools, used to identify and name the districts behind the school metrics.
On this page
The Common Core of Data is, in the Department of Education's words, "the Department of Education's primary database on public elementary and secondary education in the United States" and "a comprehensive, annual, national database of all public elementary and secondary schools and school districts." The directory files are its roster: one record per local education agency and one per school, each with its official identifier, name, location, operating status, grade span and agency type.
Coverage#
The 2024-25 preliminary release holds 19,484 local education agencies and 101,333 schools, matching the totals in the NCES release notes.
This is a preliminary release, marked version 0a. NCES notes that Alaska and Rhode Island did not submit their directory collection by the May 14, 2025 due date, so districts in those states are represented as the preliminary file represents them. Figures may change when NCES publishes a final version, and publication lags the school year it describes.
How we use it#
The directory establishes which districts and schools exist and what they are called. Every school measure Birdseye publishes is reported for a school district, and this file is the authority for that district's identity — its identifier, its official name, and whether it was operating in the 2024-25 school year. It also determines which districts are eligible to appear at all.
It produces no metric of its own. The measures that rely on it are the school proficiency, graduation and staffing families, described on their own pages.
Citation#
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), 2024-25 Preliminary Directory Files, version 0a (NCES 2025046).
These are public-use data, governed by the NCES Data Usage Agreement: they may be used for statistical purposes only, and attempts to identify any individual reported case are prohibited.
References#
- 1National Center for Education Statisticshttps://nces.ed.gov/ccd/index.asp