Introduction

This report presents findings on the numbers and types of public elementary and secondary schools in the United States and other jurisdictions¹ in the 2009–10 school year, using data from the Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey of the Common Core of Data (CCD) survey system. The CCD is an annual collection of data that are reported by state education agencies (SEA) to the National Center for Education Statistics through the U.S. Department of Education's EDFacts collection system.

The purpose of this report is to introduce new data through the presentation of tables containing descriptive information; therefore, the selected findings chosen for this report demonstrate the range of information available when using the CCD. The selected findings do not represent a complete review of all observed differences in the data and are not meant to emphasize any particular issue. This revised report includes updates to the tables and findings that reflect the 2009-10 version provisional 2a of the school universe file.

The Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey can be used to report the numbers and types of schools. The information includes a school's status (new, continuing, closed, etc.), and whether it is a charter school, magnet school, and/or Title I school. The survey can also be used to report the numbers of students and the school's "locale type," that is, whether it is in a city, suburban, town, or rural area.

State education agencies follow standard definitions for the data items they report to the CCD via the EDFacts collection system. In some cases, state education agencies may be unable to report a data item or may not be able to follow the definition exactly. Examples of situations that could lead to missing data would be a state that collected only limited information about charter schools, or a state that did not have a way of identifying magnet schools. Fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) reported 2009–10 CCD data through the EDFacts collection system; the Department of Defense dependents schools (overseas and domestic) and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands reported directly to the CCD. American Samoa and Guam did not report data for the 2009–10 school year; the numbers and types of schools in these jurisdictions were carried over from prior year files.

Not all schools report students. This is because the CCD allows a student to be reported in membership for only one school.² Some schools, particularly vocational schools, provide education to students who are included in the membership of other schools. States identified the schools that provide services but do not count students in membership as "shared time" schools.

While tables include data for all of the CCD respondents, "United States" and "reporting states" totals in the tables are limited to the 50 states and the District of Columbia. They do not include data from the Bureau of Indian Education, Department of Defense dependents schools (overseas and domestic), Puerto Rico, or the other jurisdictions of American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or the U.S. Virgin Islands.

More information about the survey content and methodology can be found in Appendix A: Methodology and Technical Notes, of this report. The data items are defined in Appendix B: Common Core of Data Glossary.

More information about the CCD surveys and products is available here.

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