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U.S. Education Statistics
Current Statistics & Data
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the major resource for education statistics and data in the U.S. "Since 1867, NCES has been the federal statistical agency responsible for collecting, analyzing, and reporting data on the condition of U.S. education—from early childhood to adult education—to help improve student outcomes."
Examples of NCES collections and tools are listed below. Additional resources are available on their website.
Historical Reports
Higher Education
A Note on Government Information
The SCU Library's Government Information research guide provides additional guidance on how to access government information -- including data -- on the federal, state, and local levels.
Since the beginning of 2025, some federal data sets and government websites have gone offline or become unavailable. Consult the SCU Library's Finding Archived Government Information research guide for more information, including alternative data sources and data rescue efforts. Selected resources are highlighted below.
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DataLumosDataLumos is an ICPSR archive for valuable government data resources. ICPSR has a long commitment to safekeeping and disseminating US government and other social science data. They have an older version of many major datasets, including some from the CDC.
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Department of Education ArchiveDirect link to Department of Education archived data in DataLumos.
California Schools & Districts
To find information about a specific school or district in California, go to the California Department of Education website and select "school profile" or "district profile" to search.
You can also search the California School Dashboard.
Additional resources:
Child and Family Wellbeing
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ChildStats.govAccess reports from the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, including the annual "America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being," which examines 41 indicators of child and family wellbeing.
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Kids Count Data Center (AECF)A project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, compiling data on children, youth, and families.
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Measure of America (SSRC)Information from the Social Science Research Council about well-being, opportunity, health, education, and living standards in America.
General Resources
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Statista This link opens in a new windowProvides statistics, reports and insight on over 80,000 topics from 22,500 sources in 170 countries, with content that ranges from forecasts, surveys, white paper reports, and daily data. Insight reports cover the market, consumers, companies, as well as e-commerce.
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Social Explorer This link opens in a new windowOnline mapping tools and data related to United States demography, economy, health, politics, environment, crime and more. Users can add their own data, create reports and download for offline processing. Updated regularly.
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Our World in DataOpen access resource collecting data on a broad range of topics.
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ICPSR This link opens in a new windowICPSR provides access to datasets in disciplines such as criminal justice, education, political science, public health, sociology, and substance abuse. Researchers can analyze the data using statistical software such as R, SPSS, or Stata. SCU is a member institution.
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Census Data (U.S. Census Bureau)Centralized resource for exploring Census data.