Appendix D—Urbanicity Categories

Appendix D—Urbanicity Categories

Note: For purposes of the site selection for the comparative multi-site case study, we are using the US Department of Education’s Common Core of Data (CCD) definitions of urbanicity for Head Start and elementary school locations. We have retained the three-level categorization for city (large, mid-size, small) and collapsed the suburb, town, and rural categories.

Urbanicity	NCES urban-centric locale code and Description
City	Large (11)	Territory inside an urbanized area and inside a principal city with population of 250,000 or more.
	Mid-size (12)	Territory inside an urbanized area and inside a principal city with a population less than 250,000 and greater than or equal to 100,000.
	Small (13)	Territory inside an urbanized area and inside a principal city with a population less than 100,000.
Suburb	Large (21)	Territory outside a principal city and inside an urbanized area with population of 250,000 or more.
	Midsize (22)	Territory outside a principal city and inside an urbanized area with a population less than 250,000 and greater than or equal to 100,000.
	Small (23)	Territory outside a principal city and inside an urbanized area with a population less than 100,000.
Town	Fringe (31)	Territory inside an urban cluster that is less than or equal to 10 miles from an urbanized area.
	Distant (32)	Territory inside an urban cluster that is more than 10 miles and less than or equal to 35 miles from an urbanized area.
	Remote (33)	Territory inside an urban cluster that is more than 35 miles from an urbanized area.
Rural	Fringe (41)	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.
	Fringe (42)	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.
	Fringe (43)	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.

Source: Documentation to the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data Public Elementary/ Secondary School Universe Survey: School Year 2009–10, 2009–10 Version 1a. U.S. Department of Education, Appendix A—Record Layout for the Common Core of Data Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey: School Year 2009–10, NCES urban-centric locale code. https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/pdf/INsc09101a.pdf