What is CRDC school data?

What CRDC adds to a school directory

The Civil Rights Data Collection reports student access to programs, courses, staff, and other educational resources, along with discipline and school climate measures. A directory identifies schools; CRDC adds collection-specific observations. The CRDC data and collection documentation provide the public files and documentation.

CCD and CRDC answer different questions

NCES CCD supplies public-school directory and enrollment records. CRDC covers fields such as counselor FTE, nurse FTE, and access to advanced courses. A school’s presence in a directory does not guarantee a usable value for every CRDC item.

How to join the collections

1. Choose the required school year and download its data layout.
2. Keep identifiers as text and use the documented school crosswalk.
3. Check for duplicate keys and unmatched records before combining fields.
4. Preserve source-specific years and missing-value codes.

Do not join solely on school names: names can repeat or change. When newer directory enrollment is paired with older staffing, disclose both vintages.

Zero, missing, and not applicable

Zero is a reported numeric value. Missing means no usable value is available; not applicable means the item may not fit that school or survey response. Read the collection’s coding rules before converting raw codes to numbers. A school without high-school grades, for example, is not automatically a negative observation in every advanced-course comparison.

Explore the fields in this release

K12 Atlas v2026.07 uses CRDC SY 2021–22. Read the counselor ratio calculation guide, nurse staffing summary, AP access summary, and discipline denominator guide for the limits of each measure. A release label records a snapshot; it is not a promise that the source describes the current school year.