School District Composites SY 2015-16 TL 16

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 2015-2016 school year are included in TIGER/Line 2016 and 2017). 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 2016 and represent boundaries reported for the 2015-2016 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）旗下的教育人口与地理估算（Education Demographic and Geographic Estimate，EDGE）项目，每年更新学区边界综合数据集，该数据集包含贴合美国海岸线裁剪的公立小学、中学及综合学区边界。学区是州与地方行政部门设立的单一职能行政单元，用于统筹并为当地居民提供公共教育服务。美国人口普查局为NCES采集学区边界数据，以支撑教育研究与项目管理工作，而此类边界数据是构建学区层面贫困儿童数量估算模型的核心依据。 美国人口普查局的学区边界审查项目（School District Boundary Review Program，SDRP，官网地址：https://www.census.gov/geo/partnerships/sdrp.html）从各州行政部门获取边界信息、学区名称与学段范围，并将这些更新内容整合至TIGER/Line数据库。尽管人口普查局每年都会更新TIGER/Line数据库，但SDBR每两年（奇数年）开展一次专项更新，因此特定学年的学区边界数据会在TIGER数据库中保留两年（例如2015-2016学年的边界数据将同时纳入2016与2017版TIGER/Line）。 人口普查局的TIGER边界数据默认包含沿海区域的法定海事缓冲区，但NCES的综合数据集会移除此类缓冲区，以扩大数据的适用范围并优化制图呈现效果。NCES的EDGE项目与美国人口普查局教育人口、地理与经济统计（Education Demographic, Geographic, and Economic Statistics，EDGE）分支合作开发综合学区数据集。本数据层的输入数据源自2016版TIGER/Line数据库，对应2015-2016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。