U.S. Department of Commerce

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2011-2012 School District Review Program Information and Background

The U.S. Census Bureau creates special tabulations of decennial census data by school district geography. These tabulations provide detailed demographic characteristics of the nation's public school systems and offer one of the largest single sources of children's demographic characteristics currently available. Information is distributed through the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

The School District Review Program (SDRP), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau every two years, is of vital importance for each state's allocation under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Public Law (P.L.) 107-110. The school district information obtained through this program, along with the 2010 Census population data, survey data, current population estimates, federal tax information, and tabulations of administrative records data, are used in forming the Census Bureau's estimates of the number of children aged 5 through 17 in low-income families for each school district. These estimates of the number of children in low-income families residing within each school district are the basis of the Title I allocation for each school district.

The SDRP consists of two phases – the Annotation Phase and the Verification Phase. In the Annotation Phase, the Census Bureau provides state officials with materials containing the most current school district boundaries and information for their state. This data is reviewed and any changes in the school district boundaries or attributes are reported to the Census Bureau. The Verification Phase is when state officials review the results of any changes submitted, after the Census Bureau has incorporated those changes into the Master Address Files (MAF)/Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) System (MAF/TIGER) database.

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