NCES EDGE School Attendance Boundary Survey (SABS)

The School Attendance Boundary Survey (SABS) was an experimental survey conducted by NCES’ EDGE program with assistance from the U.S. Census Bureau to collect school attendance boundaries. The SABS collection includes boundaries for more than 70,000 schools in over 12,000 school districts throughout the United States. The SABS boundaries can help data users visualize and explore the spatial distribution of educational outcomes and learn how the structure of educational geography varies within and between local school systems. The SABS data are provided as shapefiles and are primarily intended for use with a geographic information system (GIS). The shapefiles include feature geometry for elementary, middle, and high school boundaries as well the name, ID, grade span, and other attributes for each school. Although the SABS data do not define feeder patterns between school levels, the boundaries are provided in a single composite file to help visualize and identify the spatial relationships between school catchment areas.