US Schools, Districts & Colleges Scraper — Education Leads (NCES + IPEDS)

Extract every US public school, school district, and college/university from the official NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) and IPEDS — the authoritative federal education datasets. Get name, phone, full address & geo, enrollment, grade range, Title I status, charter/magnet flags, free-lunch %, locale, staff counts, the college president's name & title, and the institution website — then optionally crawl that website for contact emails, phones and socials.

No API key, no login, no browser — clean JSON straight from the source, with a 0–100 lead score on every record.

Why this scraper?

Most "school" or "education leads" scrapers just scrape Google Maps and return a name, an address and maybe an email — for the handful of schools Maps happens to surface. This actor ships the complete official dataset for any state, with the firmographics that actually let you target:

Data	Google-Maps lead scrapers	This actor
Coverage	whatever Maps surfaces	every NCES/IPEDS institution in the state
Enrollment / student counts	❌	✅
Grade range, school level	❌	✅
Title I status & free-lunch % (funding signals)	❌	✅
Charter / magnet / virtual flags	❌	✅
District (LEA) link + per-district staff counts	❌	✅
Locale (City / Suburb / Town / Rural)	❌	✅
College control, sector, size, highest degree	❌	✅
College president / chief admin name & title	❌	✅
Institution website + contact emails	partial	✅ opt-in
Phone	partial	✅ ~100% of K-12
Lead score (0–100)	❌	✅
Monitor mode — only new institutions	❌	✅

What you get

Three institution types, selectable per run:

• Schools (K-12 public, NCES CCD) — name, NCES ID, phone, mailing & physical address, geo, district, school level, grade range, enrollment, teachers (FTE), student/teacher ratio, charter/magnet/virtual, Title I status & eligibility, free / reduced-price-lunch counts & %, locale, congressional & state-legislative districts.
• Districts (LEAs) (NCES CCD) — name, phone, address, geo, county, agency type, number of schools, enrollment, special-ed / ELL / migrant counts, and a full staff FTE breakdown (teachers by level, counselors, psychologists, librarians, aides, administrators).
• Colleges & universities (IPEDS) — name, phone, address, geo, control (public/private), sector, size, level, highest degree offered, HBCU/tribal/medical flags, EIN, chief administrator (president) name & title, website, financial-aid & application URLs, Carnegie classification.

Use cases

• EdTech & SaaS sales — build target account lists by state, level, enrollment size, locale, and Title I status; reach the district or the college president directly.
• School & classroom suppliers — furniture, technology, food service, transportation, athletics: filter by enrollment and grade range to size every account.
• Fundraising & grants — Title I and free-lunch % flag high-need schools and districts for foundations, nonprofits and grant programs.
• Higher-ed services & recruiting — segment colleges by control, sector, size and degree level; contact the president's office.
• Market research & analytics — official, comprehensive enrollment & staffing data for any state, ready for your model or dashboard.
• Real estate & local marketing — schools, ratings-adjacent locale data and district boundaries by ZIP/county.

How to use

1. Sign up for Apify — the free plan is enough to try this actor.
2. Open the US Schools, Districts & Colleges Scraper, choose institutionTypes, enter one or more states, and click Start.
3. Watch results stream into the dataset table.
4. Export as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS — or pull results programmatically via the Apify API.

Input

{
    "institutionTypes": ["schools", "districts", "colleges"],
    "states": ["TX", "California"],
    "schoolLevels": ["High"],
    "minEnrollment": 500,
    "titleIEligibleOnly": false,
    "enrichContactEmails": true,
    "maxResults": 1000
}

• institutionTypes — any of schools (K-12 public), districts (LEAs), colleges (IPEDS).
• states — full name or 2-letter code (Texas, TX, California, NY). Leave empty to scan all states (use maxResults/maxResultsPerState to control cost).
• nameQuery — keep only institutions whose name contains this text (community college, academy).
• year — survey year (e.g. 2022); leave empty for the latest available.
• schoolLevels / localeTypes / minEnrollment / maxEnrollment — core filters.
• charterOnly / magnetOnly / virtualOnly / titleIEligibleOnly — school flags.
• collegeControls / collegeLevels / hbcuOnly — college filters.
• ncesSchoolIds / leaIds / collegeUnitIds — look up specific institutions by official ID.
• enrichContactEmails (default false) — crawl each institution's website (home + contact/about) for emails, phones and socials. Applies to institutions that publish a website (colleges). NCES does not publish K-12 emails.
• monitorMode (default false) — remember institutions across runs and emit only NEW ones; ideal for scheduled "new schools / new charters / closures" tracking.

Output

One record per institution. A K-12 school (type: "school"):

{
    "type": "school",
    "ncesId": "480000112448",
    "name": "Crosbyton High School",
    "districtId": "4800001",
    "districtName": "CROSBYTON CISD",
    "phone": "(806) 675-7331",
    "street": "204 S Harrison St",
    "city": "Crosbyton",
    "state": "TX",
    "zip": "79322",
    "latitude": 33.658381,
    "longitude": -101.24788,
    "locale": "Rural — Remote",
    "localeBucket": "Rural",
    "schoolLevel": "High",
    "lowestGradeOffered": "9",
    "highestGradeOffered": "12",
    "enrollment": 210,
    "teachersFte": 18.5,
    "studentTeacherRatio": 11.4,
    "charter": false,
    "magnet": false,
    "titleIEligible": true,
    "titleIStatus": "Title I schoolwide school",
    "freeOrReducedPriceLunch": 152,
    "frplPercent": 72.4,
    "year": 2022,
    "leadScore": 58,
    "ncesUrl": "https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/school_detail.asp?ID=480000112448",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-20T12:00:00.000Z"
}

A college (type: "college") adds the decision-maker and website:

{
    "type": "college",
    "ncesId": "222822",
    "name": "Angelina College",
    "phone": "(936) 639-1301",
    "city": "Lufkin",
    "state": "TX",
    "control": "Public",
    "institutionLevel": "At least 2 but less than 4 years",
    "size": "1,000–4,999",
    "highestDegreeOffered": "Associate's degree",
    "hbcu": false,
    "decisionMakerName": "Michael J. Simon",
    "decisionMakerTitle": "President",
    "website": "http://www.angelina.edu",
    "email": "info@angelina.edu",
    "leadScore": 89,
    "ncesUrl": "https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=222822"
}

Automate & schedule

Run this actor on autopilot and pull results into your own stack:

• Apify API — start runs, fetch datasets, and manage schedules over REST.
• apify-client for JavaScript and apify-client for Python — official SDKs.
• Schedules — run it daily/weekly and combine with monitorMode to capture only newly opened schools, new charters, or closures.
• Webhooks — trigger downstream actions (CRM import, Slack alert, email sequence) the moment a run finishes.

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'MY_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('scrapesage/us-schools-scraper').call({
    institutionTypes: ['colleges'],
    states: ['CA', 'TX', 'NY'],
    collegeControls: ['Public'],
    enrichContactEmails: true,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Got ${items.length} institutions & leads`);

Integrate with any app

Connect the dataset to 5,000+ apps — no code required:

• Make — multi-step automation scenarios.
• Zapier — push new institutions straight into your CRM.
• Slack — get notified when a monitored search finds new schools.
• Google Drive / Sheets — auto-export every run to a spreadsheet.
• Airbyte — pipe results into your data warehouse.
• GitHub — trigger runs from commits or releases.

Use with AI assistants (MCP)

The output is clean, LLM-ready JSON. Call this actor from Claude, ChatGPT, or any agent framework through the Apify MCP server — ask your assistant to "list every public high school in Texas with over 1,000 students and their phone numbers" and let it run this scraper for you.

More scrapers from scrapesage

Build a complete B2B lead & official-data stack:

• NPI NPPES Healthcare Provider Scraper — 8M+ US doctors, dentists & healthcare orgs from the official registry.
• US Business Formation Scraper — newly registered LLCs & companies from state registries.
• US Federal Grants Scraper — open grant opportunities (schools & nonprofits chase these).
• USASpending Scraper — federal awards, contracts & recipients.
• FMCSA Trucking Scraper — US carriers & DOT-registered fleets with contacts.
• TaxBuzz Scraper — tax pros & accountants with contact details.
• Healthgrades Scraper — physician & practice leads with reviews.

Tips

• Cost control — set maxResults (and optionally maxResultsPerState). A single big state can contain 9,000+ schools.
• Whole-country runs — leave states empty to scan all states; pair with filters (schoolLevels, minEnrollment, collegeControls) to keep volume on target.
• Funding-need targeting — titleIEligibleOnly plus a high frplPercent pinpoints high-need schools for grants and nonprofit outreach.
• Recurring monitoring — combine Schedules with monitorMode to track new institutions only.
• Proxies — keep the default Residential US group; the source API is behind a Cloudflare challenge that blocks datacenter IPs.

FAQ

Where does the data come from? The official NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) for public schools & districts and IPEDS for colleges, served via the open Urban Institute Education Data API. It is public, authoritative government education data.

How current is it? CCD is released about two years after each school year (latest ≈ 2022–23); IPEDS is slightly fresher. The actor uses the latest available year and falls back automatically if a year isn't published yet. You can pin a specific year.

Can I get school email addresses? NCES doesn't publish K-12 emails — for schools and districts the contact is the official phone (≈100% coverage). For colleges, turn on enrichContactEmails to crawl the institution's website for public contact emails, or use the published president's name + phone.

Can I scrape the whole country? Yes — leave states empty. Use maxResults and filters to control volume and cost.

Can I export to Google Sheets, CSV, or Excel? Yes — one click in the dataset view, or automatically on every run via the Google Drive integration.

How do I get only new institutions on a schedule? Turn on monitorMode and create a Schedule; each run emits only institutions not seen before.

Is this legal? This actor collects publicly available government data only. You are responsible for using the data in compliance with applicable laws and the source's terms.

A field is null — why? Some institutions genuinely don't report every field (e.g. a brand-new school without enrollment yet). Fields are null only when the source doesn't publish them, not because the scraper skipped them.

Need help?

Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab, or visit the Apify help center. Feature requests are welcome — this actor is actively maintained.