NCES K-12 Public School Directory Scraper

Scrapes the NCES Common Core of Data — the federal directory of every U.S. public K-12 school. Returns NCES IDs, addresses, phone numbers, school websites, district linkage, enrollment counts, FTE teacher counts, student/teacher ratios, free/reduced-lunch eligibility, and demographic breakdowns for ~98,000 schools across 50 states plus DC, BIE, DoDEA, and territories.

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NCES K-12 Scraper Features

• Pulls the full structured record per school — 32 fields including NCES School ID, NCES District ID, mailing address, phone, website, enrollment, teacher FTE
• Filters by state (any subset of 57 jurisdictions including BIE and DoDEA) and grade level (elementary, middle, high, or all)
• Filters by school type — regular, special education, vocational/technical, or alternative
• Returns free-lunch eligibility, reduced-price lunch counts, and direct-certification (SNAP-linked) counts where reported
• Includes per-grade enrollment, gender split, and seven-category race/ethnicity breakdowns
• Links each school to its parent district with both NCES LEAID and the district detail URL
• Caps result count with maxItems so you can pull a sample without paying for a full national crawl
• No proxy required — federal public data, served straight from NCES

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Who Uses K-12 School Directory Data?

• EdTech sales teams — build account lists by state, district size, or Title I demographics, then route to the right rep
• Curriculum vendors — qualify schools by grade band and enrollment before sending the demo email
• Education researchers — assemble study cohorts, compute district-level summaries, or join NCES data to external sources
• Grant writers — pull free-lunch eligibility counts to qualify schools for ESSA Title I, II, IV programs (NCES is the citation source)
• Civic data journalists — query enrollment trends and school-type distributions without learning the IPEDS download portal
• State agency analysts — verify directory data, build comparison sets, or feed public dashboards

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How the K-12 Scraper Works

1. You pick states, school types, and a grade band. The defaults cover all U.S. states and territories with no grade filter, capped at 15 records.
2. The scraper queries the NCES School Locator listing endpoint for each state, paginates through results 15 per page, and enqueues each school's detail page.
3. Each detail page is parsed for the labeled directory fields, district linkage, enrollment characteristics, and the demographic tables. Records are saved as flat JSON, one per school.

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Input

{
  "states": ["06", "48"],
  "schoolTypes": ["1"],
  "gradeLevel": "all",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Field	Type	Default	Description
states	Array of strings	[] (all states)	FIPS state codes. e.g. "06" California, "36" New York, "48" Texas. Leave empty for a national crawl.
schoolTypes	Array of strings	["1","2","3","4"]	NCES school types to include. 1 = Regular, 2 = Special Education, 3 = Vocational/Technical, 4 = Other/Alternative.
gradeLevel	String	"all"	Grade band. "all", "elementary", "middle", or "high". Filters using NCES's IncGrade form parameter.
maxItems	Integer	15	Maximum number of school records to return. Default is conservative; raise for production runs.
maxListingPagesPerState	Integer	0 (no cap)	Cap on listing pages crawled per state. Each page returns 15 schools. Use to bound crawl size.

One State, Just High Schools

{
  "states": ["36"],
  "schoolTypes": ["1"],
  "gradeLevel": "high",
  "maxItems": 500
}

National Sample

{
  "states": [],
  "maxItems": 1000
}

Charter / Alternative Schools in California

{
  "states": ["06"],
  "schoolTypes": ["4"],
  "maxItems": 250
}

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NCES K-12 Scraper Output Fields

{
  "school_name": "A. E. Arnold Elementary",
  "school_nces_id": "061044001166",
  "state_school_id": "CA-3066480-6027767",
  "school_type": "Regular school",
  "school_status": "Open",
  "charter": "No",
  "district_name": "Cypress Elementary",
  "district_nces_id": "0610440",
  "state_district_id": "CA-3066480",
  "district_url": "https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/districtsearch/district_detail.asp?Search=2&details=1&ID2=0610440&DistrictID=0610440",
  "grade_span": "KG - 6",
  "grade_low": "KG",
  "grade_high": "6",
  "address_mailing": "9281 Denni St.",
  "city": "Cypress",
  "state": "CA",
  "zip": "90630-2724",
  "county": "Orange County",
  "locale": "City, Small (13)",
  "phone": "(714)220-6965",
  "website": "http://ar.cypsd.org/",
  "enrollment_total": 560,
  "teachers_fte": 23,
  "student_teacher_ratio": 24.35,
  "free_lunch_eligible": 225,
  "reduced_lunch_eligible": 72,
  "free_reduced_lunch_total": 297,
  "free_lunch_direct_cert": 164,
  "enrollment_by_grade": "KG=100; 1=69; 2=70; 3=77; 4=75; 5=74; 6=95",
  "enrollment_male": 266,
  "enrollment_female": 294,
  "enrollment_by_race": "American Indian/Alaska Native=1; Asian=162; Black=21; Hispanic=215; White=125; Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander=2; Two or More Races=34",
  "data_year": "2024-2025",
  "detail_url": "https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/school_detail.asp?...&ID=061044001166",
  "scraped_at": "2026-04-28T01:24:00.000Z"
}

Field	Type	Description
school_name	String	Full school name as published by NCES
school_nces_id	String	12-digit NCES School ID (national unique key)
state_school_id	String	State-assigned school identifier
school_type	String	Regular, Special Education, Vocational/Technical, or Other/Alternative
school_status	String	Open, Closed, New, Reopened, Future, or Inactive
charter	String	"Yes" or "No"
district_name	String	Local Education Agency (district) name
district_nces_id	String	7-digit NCES District ID (LEAID)
state_district_id	String	State-assigned district identifier
district_url	String	URL to the NCES district detail page
grade_span	String	Grade span as shown on NCES (e.g. "KG - 5", "6 - 8", "9 - 12")
grade_low	String	Lowest grade served
grade_high	String	Highest grade served
address_mailing	String	Street line of the mailing address
city	String	City
state	String	Two-letter state postal code
zip	String	ZIP or ZIP+4
county	String	County name
locale	String	NCES urbanicity code + label (e.g. "City, Midsize (12)")
phone	String	Main phone number
website	String	Official school website URL where district publishes one
enrollment_total	Number	Total enrolled students
teachers_fte	Number	Full-time-equivalent classroom teachers
student_teacher_ratio	Number	Student-to-teacher ratio
free_lunch_eligible	Number	Students eligible for free lunch under NSLP
reduced_lunch_eligible	Number	Students eligible for reduced-price lunch
free_reduced_lunch_total	Number	Combined free + reduced-price lunch eligible
free_lunch_direct_cert	Number	Free-lunch eligible by Direct Certification (SNAP-linked)
enrollment_by_grade	String	Per-grade counts as "Grade=Count" pairs joined with "; "
enrollment_male	Number	Male student count
enrollment_female	Number	Female student count
enrollment_by_race	String	Race/ethnicity counts as "Group=Count" pairs joined with "; "
data_year	String	School year of the source data (e.g. "2024-2025")
detail_url	String	URL to the NCES school detail page
scraped_at	String	ISO 8601 timestamp when the record was extracted

Numeric fields are null when NCES marks the value as missing (–) or not applicable (†). Title I and Magnet status fields aren't returned because NCES dropped them from CCD starting school year 2022-23.

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FAQ

How do I scrape NCES school directory data?

The NCES K-12 Scraper handles it for you. Pick the states, school types, and grade level you want, then let it run. The actor walks the public CCD School Locator pages and returns one structured JSON record per school — no scraping logic to write, no NCES bulk download to wrangle.

How much does it cost to run?

Each run has a $0.10 start fee plus $0.001 per school record. A full California crawl (~10,000 schools) costs about $10.10. A 1,000-school national sample runs about $1.10. Pricing is the same across states.

Can I filter to charter schools or by Title I status?

You can filter by school type (schoolTypes: ["4"] for Other/Alternative, which includes most charters) and by grade band. Title I status itself isn't available — NCES removed it from CCD starting school year 2022-23, and the page now points users to the ED Data Express site for that field. The free-lunch counts returned here are usually a better proxy for need-based qualification anyway.

Does the scraper need proxies?

The NCES K-12 Scraper does not need proxies. NCES is a public federal site with no anti-bot protection. The actor crawls at a polite concurrency of 8 and respects rate limits.

How current is the data?

NCES publishes one school year of CCD data at a time. The current release is school year 2024-2025, included in the data_year field on every record. NCES updates annually around late spring.

Can I get superintendent or principal emails?

Not from this actor. NCES doesn't publish individual staff contacts — only the school's main phone, address, and website. For superintendent or principal emails you'd need to scrape each district's own site, which uses dozens of different content management systems and is its own project.

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Need More Features?

Need additional fields, district-level rollups, or per-district staff scraping? File an issue or get in touch.

Why Use the NCES K-12 Scraper?

• Authoritative source — pulls from the federal CCD release, the same dataset every state agency and education researcher already cites
• Real demographics — returns per-grade enrollment, gender split, race/ethnicity breakdowns, and NSLP eligibility counts in the same record as the directory fields, which is more than most directory scrapers bother with
• Affordable — $0.10 per run plus $0.001 per record. A million-school national crawl would cost about $98, if anyone needed that