School District Composites SY 2013-14 TL 15

The National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) Education Demographic and Geographic Estimate (EDGE) program develops annually updated school district boundary composite files that include public elementary, secondary, and unified school district boundaries clipped to the U.S. shoreline. School districts are single-purpose administrative units designed by state and local officials to organize and provide public education for local residents. District boundaries are collected for NCES by the U.S. Census Bureau to support educational research and program administration, and the boundaries are essential for constructing district-level estimates of the number of children in poverty. The Census Bureau’s School District Boundary Review program (SDRP) (https://www.census.gov/geo/partnerships/sdrp.html) obtains the boundaries, names, and grade ranges from state officials, and integrates these updates into Census TIGER/Line. Although the Census Bureau updates TIGER/Line every year, the SDBR is a biennial update conducted on the odd-numbered years, therefore district boundaries for a given school year persist in TIGER for two years (e.g., boundaries for the 2013-2014 school year are included in TIGER/Line 2014 and 2015). Census TIGER boundaries include legal maritime buffers for coastal areas by default, but the NCES composite file removes these buffers to facilitate broader use and cleaner cartographic representation. The NCES EDGE program collaborates with the U.S. Census Bureau’s Education Demographic, Geographic, and Economic Statistics (EDGE) Branch to develop the composite school district files. The inputs for this data layer were developed from Census TIGER/Line 2015 and represent boundaries reported for the 2013-2014 school year. For more information about NCES school district boundary data, see: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/edge/Geographic/DistrictBoundaries.美国国家教育统计中心（National Center for Education Statistics, NCES）的教育人口与地理估算（Education Demographic and Geographic Estimate, EDGE）项目会开发每年更新的学区边界综合文件，其中包含裁剪至美国海岸线的公立小学、中学及综合学区边界。学区是由州和地方官员设立的单一用途行政单位，用于组织并为当地居民提供公立教育。美国人口普查局为NCES收集学区边界数据，以支撑教育研究与项目管理，而此类边界数据是构建学区层面贫困儿童数量估算的核心依据。美国人口普查局的学区边界审查项目（School District Boundary Review Program, SDRP）（https://www.census.gov/geo/partnerships/sdrp.html）会从州级官员处获取边界信息、名称及学段范围，并将这些更新内容整合至人口普查TIGER/Line（Census TIGER/Line）数据中。尽管人口普查局每年都会更新TIGER/Line数据，但SDBR仅在奇数年开展两年一次的更新，因此某一学年的学区边界会在TIGER数据中保留两年（例如2013-2014学年的边界会被纳入2014与2015版的TIGER/Line数据）。人口普查TIGER/Line边界默认包含沿海地区的法定海事缓冲区，但NCES的综合文件会移除此类缓冲区，以提升数据的通用性并实现更简洁的制图表达。NCES的EDGE项目会与美国人口普查局的教育人口、地理与经济统计（Education Demographic, Geographic, and Economic Statistics, EDGE）分支合作开发综合学区边界文件。本数据层的输入数据源自2015版TIGER/Line，对应2013-2014学年上报的学区边界。如需了解更多NCES学区边界数据的相关信息，请访问：https://nces.ed.gov/programs/edge/Geographic/DistrictBoundaries.