Appendix A.3. EDFacts Data Governance Board

The EDFacts Initiative

EDFacts is a centralized data collection through which state education agencies (SEAs) submit PK–12 education data to the U.S. Department of Education (ED). All data in EDFacts are organized into “data groups” and reported to ED using defined file specifications. Depending on the data group, SEAs may submit aggregate counts for the state as a whole or detailed counts for individual schools or school districts. EDFacts does not collect student-level records. The entities that are required to report EDFacts data vary by data group but may include the 50 states, the District of Columbia, the Department of Defense Education Activity, the Bureau of Indian Education, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. More information about EDFacts file specifications and data groups can be found at https://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/edfacts/index.html.

EDFacts is a universe collection and is not subject to sampling error, although nonsampling errors such as nonresponse and inaccurate reporting may occur. ED attempts to minimize nonsampling errors by training data submission coordinators and reviewing the quality of state data submissions. However, anomalies may still be present in the data.

Differences in state data collection systems may limit the comparability of EDFacts data across states and across time. To build EDFacts files, SEAs rely on data that were reported by their schools and school districts. The systems used to collect these data are evolving rapidly and differ from state to state. For example, there is a large shift in California’s firearm incident data between 2010–11 and 2011–12. California cited a new student data system that more accurately collects firearm incident data as the reason for the magnitude of the difference.

In some cases, EDFacts data may not align with data reported on SEA websites. States may update their websites on schedules different from those they use to report data to ED. Furthermore, ED may use methods for protecting the privacy of individuals represented within the data that could be different from the methods used by an individual state.

Data on homeless students enrolled in public schools, English language learners enrolled in public schools, four-year adjusted cohort graduation rates, and students being removed from school due to disciplinary action are collected by EDFacts on behalf of the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education.

EDFacts collects data on students in incidents involving firearms on behalf of the Office of Safe and Healthy Students in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. The definition for this data group is “the unduplicated number of students who were involved in an incident involving a firearm.” The reporting period is the entire school year. For more information about this data group, see https://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/edfacts/sy-18-19-nonxml.html.

For more information about EDFacts, please contact

Ross Santy
Administrative Data Division
National Center for Education Statistics
U.S. Department of Education
550 12th Street SW
Washington, DC 20202
ross.santy@ed.gov
https://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/edfacts/index.html