NCES EDGE Locale Classifications

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) United States Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences. National Center for Education Statistics

Version:  View help for Version V2

Name File Type Size Last Modified
Locales.zip application/zip 3.9 GB 02/15/2025 03:19:PM

Project Citation: 

United States Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences. National Center for Education Statistics. NCES EDGE Locale Classifications. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2026-04-20. https://doi.org/10.3886/E219602V2

Project Description

Project Title:  View help for Project Title NCES EDGE Locale Classifications
Summary:  View help for Summary Dataset defines locale classifications by geography. A  locale classification is a general geographic indicator that describes the type of area where a school is located. NCES classifies all territory in the U.S. into four types – City, Suburban, Town, and Rural – and each type is divided into three subtypes based on population size or proximity to populated areas. The classifications begin with standard urban and rural criteria defined by the Census Bureau, and NCES extends these designations to provide additional detail. Locale boundaries can be used with a geographic information system (GIS) to assign the NCES locale framework to other types of geographic data. They can also be used to identify places and conditions contained within or across different types of locales.

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Microdata: Yes
Level of Analysis: Local - Geographic data
Variables Present: N/A
File Layout: shapefiles
Codebook: Yes
Methods: Yes
Weights (with appropriate documentation): N/A
Publications: No
Aggregate Data: No
Original Distribution URL:  View help for Original Distribution URL https://nces.ed.gov/programs/edge/Geographic/LocaleBoundaries

Scope of Project

Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage National
Time Period(s):  View help for Time Period(s) 2014 – 2023 (Annual)


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Published Versions

V2 [2026-04-20]

V1 [2025-02-15]

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Dublin Core

DDI 2.5

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