New York City Department of Education Data
Student- and staff-level information collected by NYCDOE, including data on graduation outcomes, math and ELA standardized tests scores, School Quality Reports, demographics, the New York State Report Cards, and a variety of other information regarding students and faculty.
New York City public schools students and staff
Access
The NYCDOE offers both publicly available data and individual-level data that are available upon request. All requests for individual-level data must be submitted to the Research and Policy Support Group (RPSG). Researchers interested in accessing individual-level data must first create an account in the NYCDOE’s online electronic submission platform IRBManager and then follow the instructions under “Data Requests” on the webpage Doing Research in New York City Public Schools.
After RPSG approves the data request, the researcher must complete a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). Upon approval, data can only be transmitted via a secure File Transfer Protocol (FTP), which is provided by the NYCDOE. Requests to do research in schools (e.g., administering surveys to students, interviewing students or faculty, etc.) and requests for administrative data require separate submissions to IRBManager. If research exclusively relies on the use of NYCDOE administrative data, researchers do not need to submit to the NYCDOE Institutional Review Board (IRB).
For more information on the data request process and about conducting research in New York City public schools please reference the FAQs for External data Requests. NYCDOE IRB has specific guidance for researchers considering running a randomized evaluation. Please see the IRB FAQs for Researchers document for more information.
Additional questions should be sent to [email protected]. A response should be provided within five business days.
Timeline for Access
Processing time for data requests can take 4-6 weeks and varies based on the complexity of the submission. Requests requiring consent forms, data matching, creation of new data sets, data from other DOE offices, and multiple data sets will take an additional 4-6 weeks. Student data is owned by multiple offices within DOE. Linking with DOE Data that is not owned by RPSG may take longer to compile and in some cases may not be available.
Student-level data should be destroyed once the NDA for the data request expires. NYCDOE NDAs typically last two years. However, researchers can renew their NDAs while they continue working with the data, if necessary.
Lag Time
Data are updated annually, but not all data sets become available to researchers at the same time. Complete school year data are available on an 8-9 month lag (e.g., data for the current school year are not available until the following spring).
Cost
Access to records is free.
Linking
All NYCDOE data sets are linkable to each other. A list of student and teacher-level data sets available to researchers can be found NYDOE’s External Data Request FAQs.
Identifiers Available for Linking
- Student first and last name
- Student ID
- Date of birth
- School District Borough Number (DBN)
- Either Student ID or first name, last name, DOB, and DBN are required for matching student-level data.
Linking to Outside Data Sources
Any attempts to link DOE data to external datasets will need specific approval and all existing data agreements must be included in the submission. These requests will be subject to legal review and will not be approved in all cases.
Data Contents
NYCDOE individual-level data are organized into 15 data sets. They include College Board Advanced Placement, PSAT, and SAT data; Graduation (Grad_StatCalc) data; and New York State English as a Second Language Achievement Test (NYESLAT) data. A complete list of these data sets are available on the Information and Data Overview page.
Publicly available, aggregate data include information on graduation outcomes, Math and ELA tests, School Quality Reports, demographics, and the New York State Report Cards and can also be accessed on the NYC OpenData website.
Partial List of Variables
Demographic information, test scores, college board exams, fitness data, attendance, suspension, dropout, teacher, assessment, accountability, graduation rate, post-graduate plan, career and technical education, fiscal data for public and charter schools, fiscal data for school districts
J-PAL Randomized Evaluations Using this Data Set
Dobbie, Will, and Roland G. Fryer, Jr. 2011. “Are High-Quality Schools Enough to Increase Achievement Among the Poor? Evidence from the Harlem Children’s Zone.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 3(3): 158-187.
Dobbie, Will, and Roland G. Fryer, Jr. 2015. "The Medium-Term Impacts of High-Achieving Charter Schools." Journal of Political Economy 123 (5): 985-1037.
Meghan L. Howard Noveck and Roland G. Fryer, Jr. 2020. “High-Dosage Tutoring and Reading Achievement: Evidence from New York City.” Journal of Labor Economics 38 (2): 421-452
Rockoff, Jonah, Douglas Staiger, Thomas Kane, and Eric Taylor. 2012. “Information and Employee Evaluation: Evidence from a Randomized Intervention in Public Schools.” American Economic Review 102(7): 3184-3213.
Roland G. Fryer, Jr. 2013. “Teacher Incentives and Student Achievement: Evidence from New York City Public Schools.” Journal of Labor Economics 31 (2): 373-407.
Sean P. Corcoran & Jennifer L. Jennings & Sarah R. Cohodes & Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj, 2018. “Leveling the Playing Field for High School Choice: Results from a Field Experiment of Informational Interventions.” National Bureau of Economic Research.