NCES School and District IDs, assigned and maintained by the National Center for Education Statistics, are provided in the product to assist users in joining school locations and school districts to NCES datasets. These NCES IDs are unique but not persistent – they can, and do, change from time to time. NCES changes school or district IDs because of school or district name changes, district consolidation, or district division, among other reasons.
NCES school district IDs are unique, seven-digit strings. Public schools have longer, unique 12-digit IDs, where the NCES district ID makes up the first 7 digits. The remaining 5 digits are the ID assigned by NCES.
When Precisely identifies a new school for which NCES does not yet have a record, we manufacture a placeholder NCES ID using the NCES district component and a proxy ID. When NCES assigns a school ID, the manufactured ID is retired and replaced with the standard NCES ID.