Appendix A.2. Common Core of Data

The Common Core of Data (CCD) is the Department of Education's primary database on public elementary and secondary education in the United States. It is a comprehensive, annual, national statistical database of all public elementary and secondary schools and school districts containing data designed to be comparable across all states. This database can be used to select samples for other NCES surveys and provide basic information and descriptive statistics on public elementary and secondary schools and schooling in general.

The CCD collects statistical information annually from approximately 100,000 public elementary and secondary schools and approximately 18,000 public school districts (including supervisory unions and regional education service agencies) in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Department of Defense (DoD) dependents schools, the Bureau of Indian Education, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Three categories of information are collected in the CCD survey: general descriptive information on schools and school districts; data on students and staff; and fiscal data. The general descriptive information includes name, address, phone number, and type of locale; the data on students and staff include selected demographic characteristics; and the fiscal data pertain to revenues and current expenditures.

The EDFacts data collection system is the primary collection tool for the CCD. NCES works collaboratively with the Department of Education's Performance Information Management Service to develop the CCD collection procedures and data definitions. Coordinators from State Education Agencies (SEAs) submit the CCD data at different levels (school, agency, and state) to the EDFacts collection system. Prior to submitting CCD files to EDFacts, SEAs must collect and compile information from their respective Local Education Agencies (LEAs) through established administrative records systems within their state or jurisdiction.

Once SEAs have completed their submissions, the CCD survey staff analyzes and verifies the data for quality assurance. Even though the CCD is a universe collection and thus not subject to sampling errors, nonsampling errors can occur. The two potential sources of nonsampling errors are nonresponse and inaccurate reporting. NCES attempts to minimize nonsampling errors through the use of annual training of SEA coordinators, extensive quality reviews, and survey editing procedures. In addition, each year, SEAs are given the opportunity to revise their state-level aggregates from the previous survey cycle.

The CCD survey consists of five components: The Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey, the Local Education Agency (School District) Universe Survey, the State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary/Secondary Education, the National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS), and the School District Fiscal Data Survey (F-33).

Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey

The Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey includes all public schools providing education services to prekindergarten, kindergarten, grade 1–12, and ungraded students. There are 101,822 schools on the 2009–10 file. Of these 101,822 schools, 91,522 are regular elementary and secondary, 2,123 are special education, 1,457 are vocational/technical, and 6,720 are other/alternative schools. There were 59 responding units for 2009–10: The 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Bureau of Indian Education, and the four U.S. Island Areas (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands). The DoD dependents schools (overseas and domestic), American Samoa, and Guam did not report data for the 2009–10 school year. Their school universes were based on information from the SEAs' websites, and all the other data items were left as missing.

The Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe file includes data for the following variables: NCES school ID number, state school ID number, name of the school, name of the agency that operates the school, mailing address, physical location address, phone number, school type, operational status, locale code, latitude, longitude, county number, county name, full-time-equivalent (FTE) classroom teacher count, low/high grade span offered, congressional district code, school level, free lunch-eligible students, reduced-price lunch-eligible students, total free lunch- and reduced-price lunch-eligible students, student totals and detail (by grade, by race/ethnicity, and by sex), and pupil/teacher ratio. The file also contains flags indicating whether a school is Title I eligible, schoolwide Title I eligible, a magnet school, a charter school, a shared time school, or a BIE school and whether student counts by race/ethnicity were reported by five or seven racial/ethnic categories.

Local Education Agency (School District) Universe

The coverage of the Local Education Agency Universe Survey includes all school districts and administrative units providing education services to prekindergarten, kindergarten, grade 1–12, and ungraded students. There are 59 responding units: the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Bureau of Indian Education, and the four U.S. Island Areas. The DoD dependents schools (overseas and domestic), American Samoa, and Guam did not report 2009–10 data.

The Local Education Agency Universe data file includes the following variables: NCES agency ID number, state agency ID number, agency name, phone number, mailing address, physical location address, agency type code, supervisory union number, American National Standards Institute (ANSI) state and county code, county name, core based statistical area (CBSA) code, metropolitan/micropolitan code, metropolitan status code, district locale code, congressional district code, operational status code, BIE agency status, low/high grade span offered, agency charter status, number of schools, number of full-time-equivalent (FTE) teachers, number of ungraded students, number of PK–12 students, number of special education/Individualized Education Program (IEP) students, number of English language learner (ELL) students, instructional staff fields, support staff fields, and a flag indicating whether student counts by race/ethnicity were reported by five or seven racial/ethnic categories.

State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary/Secondary Education

The State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary/Secondary Education for the 2009–10 school year provides state-level, aggregate information about students and staff in public elementary and secondary education. There are 59 responding units on the file: the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the DoD dependents schools (overseas and domestic), and the Bureau of Indian Education.

This survey covers public school student membership by grade, race/ethnicity, and state or jurisdiction and covers number of staff in public schools by category and state or jurisdiction. Beginning with the 2006–07 school year, the number of diploma recipients and other high school completers are no longer included in the State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary/Secondary Education file. These data are now published in the public-use Common Core of Data State Dropout and Completion Data File.

National Public Education Financial Survey

The purpose of the National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS) is to provide district, state, and federal policymakers, researchers, and other interested users with descriptive information about revenues and expenditures for public elementary and secondary education. The data collected are useful to (1) chief officers of state education agencies; (2) policymakers in the executive and legislative branches of federal and state governments; (3) education policy and public policy researchers; and (4) the public, journalists, and others.

Data for NPEFS are collected from SEAs in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and four other jurisdictions (American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands). The data file is organized by state or jurisdiction and contains revenue data by source and expenditure data by source (e.g., local, state, federal), function (the activity being supported by the expenditure), and object (the category of expenditure). The data file also contains average daily attendance data, as well as total student membership data from the 2007–08 CCD State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary/Secondary Education.

School District Finance Survey

The purpose of the School District Finance Survey (F-33) is to provide finance data for all local education agencies (LEAs) that provide free public elementary and secondary education in the United States. National and state totals are not included (national- and state-level figures are presented, however, in the National Public Education Financial Survey [NPEFS]).

Both NCES and the Governments Division of the U.S. Census Bureau collect public school system finance data, and they collaborate in their efforts to gather these data. The Census Bureau acts as the primary collection agent and produces two data files: one for distribution and reporting by the Census Bureau and the other for distribution and reporting by NCES.

The data file for the FY 08 CCD School District Finance Survey (F-33) contains 16,453 records representing the public elementary and secondary education agencies in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. This file contains records that are not in the Census Bureau school district finance file; the additional records contain data for charter schools and other types of school districts that the Census Bureau does not consider to be government entities. The file includes variables for revenues by source, expenditures by function, indebtedness, assets, and student membership counts, as well as identification variables.

The following text table lists the CCD file versions used in the current edition of the Digest of Education Statistics:

Education Statistics: 1986–87 through 2009–10
Year	State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary and Secondary Education	NCES Common Core of Data State Dropout and Completion Data	National Public Education Financial Survey	Local Education Agency Universe Survey	School District Finance Survey	Public Elementary/ Secondary School Universe File
1986–87 (FY 1987)	v.1c	†	v.1b–Revised	v.1	†	v.1
1987–88 (FY 1988)	v.1c	†	v.1b–Revised	v.1	†	v.1
1988–89 (FY 1989)	v.1c	†	v.1b–Revised	v.1	†	v.1
1989–90 (FY 1990)	v.1c	†	v.1b–Revised	v.1	v.1a–Final1	v.1
1990–91 (FY 1991)	v.1c	†	v.1b–Revised	v.1	†	v.1
1991–92 (FY 1992)	v.1c	†	v.1b–Revised	v.1	v.1a–Final1	Revised
1992–93 (FY 1993)	v.1c	†	v.1b–Revised	v.1	†	v.1
1993–94 (FY 1994)	v.1b	†	v.1b–Revised	v.1	†	Revised
1994–95 (FY 1995)	v.1b	†	v.1b–Revised	Revised	v.1d–Revised\1	Revised
1995–96 (FY 1996)	v.1b	†	v.1b–Revised	v.1	v.1b–Revised1	v.1
1996–97 (FY 1997)	v.1c	†	v.1b–Revised	v.1	v.1a–Final1	v.1
1997–98 (FY 1998)	v.1c	†	v.1b–Revised	v.1	v.1e–Revised1	v.1
1998–99 (FY 1999)	v.1b	†	v.1b–Revised	v.1c	v.1c–Revised1	v.1c
1999–2000 (FY 2000)	v.1b	†	v.1b–Revised	v.1b	v.1d–Revised1	v.1b
2000–01 (FY 2001)	v.1c	†	v.1b–Revised	v.1a	v.1d–Revised1	v.1a
2001–02 (FY 2002)	v.1c	†	v.1c–Revised	v.1a	v.1c–Revised1	v.1a
2002–03 (FY 2003)	v.1b	†	v.1b–Revised	v.1a	v.1b–Revised1	v.1a
2003–04 (FY 2004)	v.1b	†	v.1b–Revised	v.1b	v.1b–Revised1	v.1a
2004–05 (FY 2005)	v.1f	†	v.1b–Revised	v.1c	v.1c–Revised1	v.1b
2005–06 (FY 2006)	v.1b	v.1b	v.1b–Revised	v.1a	v.1a–Final1	v.1a
2006–07 (FY 2007)	v.1c	v.1a	v.1b–Revised	v.1c	v.1a–Final1	v.1c
2007–08 (FY 2008)	v.1b	v.1a	v.1a–Final	v.1b	v.1a–Final	v.1b
2008–09	v.1c	†	†	v.1a	†	v.1b
2009–10	v.1a	v.1a-Final	†	v.1a	†	v.1a

†Not applicable. Survey not conducted.

1 Data not used in current edition of Digest of Education Statistics.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), retrieved August 10, 2011, from http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/ccddata.asp. (This table was prepared August 2011.)

Further information on the nonfiscal CCD data may be obtained from

Patrick Keaton
Elementary/Secondary and Library Studies Division
Elementary/Secondary Cooperative System and Institutional Studies Program
National Center for Education Statistics
1990 K Street NW
Washington, DC 20006
/ccd

Further information on the fiscal CCD data may be obtained from

Stephen Cornman
Elementary/Secondary and Library Studies Division
Elementary/Secondary Cooperative System and Institutional Studies Program
National Center for Education Statistics
1990 K Street NW
Washington, DC 20006
/ccd/