The School District Review Program (SDRP) enables state officials to review the U.S. Census Bureau's school district information. State officials will provide the Census Bureau with updates and corrections to the federal school district local education agency (SDLEA) ID numbers, school district boundaries, names, grade ranges, and levels for which each school district is financially responsible.

The SDRP encompasses Type 1, 2, and 3 school districts as defined by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Type 1 is a local school district that is not a component of a supervisory union, Type 2 is a local school district component of a supervisory union sharing a superintendent and administrative services with other local school districts, and Type 3 is an education agency that performs administrative services for more than one school district, providing a common superintendent for participating districts.  Currently, the Census Bureau maintains Type 3 districts for Vermont.

The Census Bureau creates special tabulations of census data by school district geography. These tabulations provide children’s demographic characteristics of the nation's public school systems. Information is distributed through the NCES.

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. The data are reviewed and changes in the school district boundaries or information are reported to the Census Bureau. In the Verification Phase, state officials verify that the Census Bureau accurately and completely updated the Master Address File (MAF)/Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) System with changes submitted during the Annotation Phase.

The SDRP is conducted annually by the Census Bureau.

The school district information obtained through this program, along with decennial 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 families in poverty in each school district. These estimates are the basis of the Title I allocation for each school district. School district boundaries are also used to develop estimates of social, economic, demographic, and housing conditions from the American Community Survey (ACS), and they provide essential geographic information to help education program administrators and researchers investigate location-based questions.

School district boundaries were originally collected and entered into the Census Bureau’s system in the early 1990s as part of the Census Mapping Project.  This project was a collaboration between the Department of Education, the Census Bureau, and the states to collect school district boundary and code data to identify children at risk. The first SDRP was conducted in 1995 when NCES and the Census Bureau began reaching out to state departments of education for regular review and update of boundaries and attributes.

Each state and the District of Columbia designate a mapping coordinator to be the Census Bureau’s primary liaison for the SDRP. The state mapping coordinator collects updates from local school districts, state education officials, county planners, and state data centers, and ensures that submissions are completed within the SDRP’s timeframe.

If you have questions about the school districts in your state, contact your state mapping coordinator.