NCES Locale Codes

National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES)

Locale, Urban-Centric

An indication of school's location relative to a populous area. The locales assigned to school districts are based on the locale code of their schools, weighted by the size of the schools' membership. The urban-centric locale assignment system has been used starting in 2006-07. The locale code categories are defined below.

Locale Code	Code Name	Urban/Rural	Definition
11	City: Large	Urban	Territory inside an urbanized area and inside a principal city with population of 250,000 or more.
12	City: Midsize	Urban	Territory inside an urbanized area and inside a principal city with population less than 250,000 and greater than or equal to 100,000.
13	City: Small	Urban	Territory inside an urbanized area and inside a principal city with population less than 100,000.
21	Suburban: Large	Urban	Territory outside a principal city and inside an urbanized area with population of 250,000 or more.
22	Suburban: Midsized	Urban	Territory outside a principal city and inside an urbanized area with population less than 250,000 and greater than or equal to 100,000.
23	Suburban: Small	Urban	Territory outside a principal city and inside an urbanized area with population less than 100,000.
31	Town: Fringe	Rural	Territory inside an urban cluster that is less than or equal to 10 miles from an urbanized area.
32	Town: Distant	Rural	Territory inside an urban cluster that is more than 10 miles and less than or equal to 35 miles from an urbanized area.
33	Town: Remote	Rural	Territory inside an urban cluster that is more than 35 miles of an urbanized area.
41	Rural: Fringe	Rural	Census-defined rural territory that is less than or equal to 5 miles from an urbanized area, as well as rural territory that is less than or equal to 2.5 miles from an urban cluster.
42	Rural: Distant	Rural	Census-defined rural territory that is more than 5 miles but less than or equal to 25 miles from an urbanized area, as well as rural territory that is more than 2.5 miles but less than or equal to 10 miles from an urban cluster.
43	Rural: Remote	Rural	Census-defined rural territory that is more than 25 miles from an urbanized area and is also more than 10 miles from an urban cluster.