The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Education Demographic and Geographic Estimates (EDGE) program develops geographic data to help policymakers, program administrators, and the public understand relationships between educational institutions and the communities they serve. One of the commonly used geographic data items is the NCES locale classification, a general geographic indicator that categorizes U.S. territory into four types of areas: City, Suburban, Town, and Rural. Each type of area contains three subtypes. NCES uses the locale indicators to support research, analysis, and sample design. It provides a locale code for each institution in its administrative data collections--Common Core of Data (CCD), Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), and the Private School Survey (PSS)--and includes locale assignments as indicators in most NCES school-based sample surveys. Although NCES includes a locale assignment as a data item in most of its activities, the geographic boundaries used to create the assignments were first developed and published as a data product in 2015. The purpose of the NCES locale file is to provide annually updated locale boundaries in a spatial data format that can be used to support supplemental research and analysis. The NCES locale file allows data users to create locale indicators for additional institutions or locations, and enables a closer examination of physical features and social conditions that may affect education in each type of locale.
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