School District Review Program: Draft Guidelines for Using the Census Bureau Crowdsourcing Application for the Verification Phase of the 2105-2016 SDRP

School District Review Program: DRAFT
Guidelines for Using the Census Bureau Crowdsourcing
Application for the Verification Phase of the 2015-2016
School District Review Program

Issued
August 2015

Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) Statement:
A federal agency may not conduct or sponsor, nor shall a person be subject to a penalty for failure to
comply with a collection of information subject to the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act
unless that collection of information displays a current valid OMB Control Number. This collection is
voluntary. The authority for conducting this collection comes from Title 13 U.S.C, Sections 16, 141,
and 193.
The OMB Control Number for this information collection is 0607-xxxx. Public reporting for this
collection of information is estimated to be approximately 10 hours per response, depending on the
number of changes submitted during the annotation phase. This includes the time for reviewing
instructions, completing and reviewing the collection of information.
Comments concerning the accuracy of this burden and suggestions for reducing the burden should be
directed to: Paperwork Reduction 0607-xxxx, United States Census Bureau, 4600 Silver Hill Road,
Room 3K138, Washington, DC 20233. You may email comments to [email protected]; use
“Paperwork Project 0607-xxxx” as the subject.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Table of Contents
Background ............................................................................................................................................................3
Mapping Coordinator Responsibilities ...................................................................................................................3
Key Verification Dates ...........................................................................................................................................4
Accessing the CCT .................................................................................................................................................5
Registering & Logging on to the CCT ...................................................................................................................6
CCT Screen Overview............................................................................................................................................9
Navigation Tools ..................................................................................................................................................10
Imagery .................................................................................................................................................................11
Zoom to Functions................................................................................................................................................11
Zoom to County................................................................................................................................................12
Zoom to ZIP Code ............................................................................................................................................14
Zoom to Address ..............................................................................................................................................16
Zoom to Boundary............................................................................................................................................19
School District Attribute Query and Display .......................................................................................................22
Boundary Verification Process .............................................................................................................................24
Verifying Name, LEA Code, Grade Range Changes, and Dissolutions ..............................................................30
Contact Information..............................................................................................................................................35
Appendix A: Map Legend ....................................................................................................................................36

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

SDRP Verification User Guidelines
Background
The U. S. Census Bureau shipped annotation materials for the School District Review Program
(SDRP) to the appointed mapping coordinator in each of the fifty states and the District of
Columbia. The mapping coordinators contacted school district officials in their state asking
them to review their boundaries and submit any school district boundary updates. Upon receipt
of school district boundary updates, the mapping coordinators were responsible for reviewing,
adjudicating, annotating, and submitting digital files or submission logs to the Census Bureau.
Census Bureau staff reviewed submitted materials ensuring they met criteria and guidelines set
forth in the SDRP materials that were included in the delivery. Upon completion of the review,
Census Bureau staff inserted updates into its Master Address File/Topologically Integrated
Geographic Encoding and Referencing database (MTDB). In some cases, the Census Bureau
made minor changes to participant submissions so that the school district delineated would meet
the criteria outlined in the SDRP guidelines.
The Verification phase of the 2015-2016 SDRP is the opportunity for mapping coordinators and
school district officials to review their school district boundaries as they now exist in the Census
Bureau’s MTDB. During the Verification phase, participants verify or report issues with their
school district boundaries using a new verification tool called, the Census Crowdsourcing Tool
(CCT). The Census Bureau will provide verification materials to all participants from whom the
Census Bureau received school district updates.
Mapping Coordinator Responsibilities

Verifying your school district boundaries is a very important component to participating in the
SDRP. Correct school district boundaries allow the Census Bureau to create estimates and
tabulations of census data by school district geography. These estimates and tabulations provide
detailed demographic characteristics of the nation’s public school systems and offer one of the
largest single sources of children’s demographic characteristics currently available. The SDRP
is of vital importance for each state’s allocation under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Public Law (P.L.) 107-110.
The school district information obtained through this program, along with the 2010 Census
population and income data, current population estimates, and tabulations of administrative
records data, are used in forming the Census Bureau’s estimates of the number of children aged 5
through 17 in low-income families for each school district. These estimates of the number of
children in low-income families residing within each school district are the basis of the Title I
allocation for each school district. Therefore, we ask you to spend just a few more moments of
your time reviewing our representation of your updates in this new verification tool. You will
use the ‘Report an Issue’ function to report discrepancies to the Census Bureau.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Key Verification Dates
March 2016 – Census Bureau notifies state mapping coordinators that their verification
materials are available for review and verification.
March 2016 – State mapping coordinators or other state officials verify their updates using the
CCT, and we ask that state mapping coordinators notify Census Bureau via e-mail that they have
completed their verification. In order to meet critical production delivery dates, verification ends
on XXX XX, 2016; there will be no extensions. If the Census Bureau does not receive an email
by COB on this date, we will assume that you have successfully confirmed and verified your
updates to be correct.
XXXXX 2016 – Deadline for submitting school district changes during the verification phase.
May 2016 – The U.S. Census Bureau makes any changes to the database or resolves delineation
errors with the aid of the state mapping coordinator.
Important: The Census Bureau will consider no response by the XXXXX XX, 2016
deadline as acceptance of the SDRP Verification Phase.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Accessing the CCT
You can access the CCT by clicking on the link below:
https://sdrp.geo.census.gov/CrowdSourcing/faces/autoLogin.jsp
Once the user hits the enter key, the following Census Crowdsourcing login page will display.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Registering & Logging on to the CCT
Users can register an account in the system by clicking on the ‘Register’ link shown in the image
below.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

The system will display the ‘Census Crowdsourcing (GEO_CrowdSource) Registration’ page.
Please provide all of requested information and click the state you are representing under the
‘SELECT YOUR STATE’ section. Scroll down the page to display more state options.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Type your name in the ‘SIGNATURE’ box at the bottom of the registration page to certify all the
values entered on this application are true. Answer the last question as appropriate and click the
‘SUBMIT’ button.

You will receive an email confirmation from the Census Bureau to which you must respond to
get your account. After responding to the email, you will receive additional instructions for how
to setup your password.
If a user has previously registered on the system, they can log on to the system by entering their
username and password and clicking the ‘SIGN IN’ button on the ‘Census Crowdsourcing’ main
page.
Note: Registered users will only have access to information in their designated state.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

CCT Screen Overview

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Navigation Tools
The CCT includes basic navigation and display tools located at the top left. Below are brief
descriptions of tools available that enable the user to zoom in, zoom out, and pan around the
map.

Pan Buttons

To pan the map:
1. Click pan buttons to pan the map.
2. Click and drag the map.

Zoom Slider

To zoom in/out:
1. Click the + sign to zoom in and the
– button to zoom out
2. Slide the box up to zoom in and
down to zoom out
3. Scroll the mouse button up or down
to zoom.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Imagery
The user can switch the background imagery on and off by clicking on the ‘SATELLITE MAP’
option in the ‘BASE MAPS’ drop down list or by clicking on the ‘SATELLITE’ icon. Once the
user selects either option, the CCT will display the MTDB data over the satellite imagery.

Zoom to Functions
The CCT has multiple ‘ZOOM TO’ functions. The user can ‘ZOOM TO COUNTY’, ‘ZOOM
TO ZIP CODE’, ‘ZOOM TO ADDRESS’, and ‘ZOOM TO BOUNDARY.’

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Zoom to County
The user clicks the ‘ZOOM TO’ button and selects the ‘COUNTY’ option from the displayed
drop down list when they want to zoom to a county.

The CCT displays the ‘ZOOM TO COUNTY’ dialog. In the following examples, the user
selects the ‘STATE’ (California).

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Then, for example, select ‘COUNTY’ (Santa Clara) from the drop down lists, as shown below,
and then the user clicks the ‘ZOOM’ button.

Once the user clicks the ‘ZOOM’ button, the CCT zooms to the selected county’s extent. It then
displays and highlights both the county boundary and school districts as shown below.
See Appendix A for an explanation of the map symbology.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Zoom to ZIP Code
The user selects ‘ZIP CODE’ from the ‘ZOOM TO’ drop down list.

The user then selects state, county, and ZIP code from the drop down list.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Once the user clicks the ‘ZOOM’ button, the CCT will zoom to, and highlight the extent of, the
selected ZIP code and display the school district boundaries. The user can use the ‘MAP
NAVIGATION’ controls to pan around and zoom in and out of the displayed map if they wish to
see a more detailed map. The extent of the ZIP code remains highlighted.
See Appendix A for an explanation of the map symbology.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Zoom to Address
The user can zoom to an address by selecting the ‘ZOOM TO ADDRESS’ option.

The ‘ZOOM TO ADDRESS’ dialog window appears. The user selects state and county.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

The user then selects the ZIP code of the address range they want to map.

The CCT auto-selects street names as the user enters letters into the ‘ADDRESS’ box.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Once the user selects the street name and address range, the CCT will zoom to and highlight the
street segment and the census tabulation block to which the street segment and address range are
associated.
See Appendix A for an explanation of the map symbology.

The street segment will be highlighted in red.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Zoom to Boundary
The user can zoom to a school district boundary by selecting ‘ZOOM TO BOUNDARY’ option
from the ‘ZOOM TO’ drop down list as shown below.

The CCT will display the ‘ZOOM TO LOCATION’ dialog as shown below.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

The user should select their ‘STATE’, set ‘COUNTY’ to ‘Statewide’, and select ‘School
District’ for the ‘SUB BOUNDARY’.
Note: School districts may exist in more than one county so the best way to ‘ZOOM TO’ them
is by selecting the ‘Statewide’ option for ‘COUNTY.’ School districts that do exist in more than
one county will not be listed under each county part if the user selects a specific county in this
dialog.

The user selects the school district type they are researching. ‘Unified’ is selected in the
example below.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

The user then selects the specific school district under the ‘NAME’ option. The user can enter
the first letter of the school district to quickly move down the list.

The user double clicks the ‘ZOOM’ button to zoom to and display the selected school district.
In this example, Appleton City R-II School District is highlighted in pink with a pink shaded
boundary symbol.
See Appendix A for an explanation of the map symbology.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

School District Attribute Query and Display
The user can view the attributes of a school district by clicking the feature information function
on the tool menu bar and selecting the polygons option.

To display a school districts attribute data, the user clicks anywhere on the displayed map or
within a specific School District boundary. The CCT will then display the School District layer
list dialog.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

The user now selects the School District for which they wish to display the attributes. In this
example, the user selected Union Elementary School District. Once the user clicks on the
‘School District’ name, the CCT displays the School District attribute information, zooms to and
highlights the selected school district.

The user can now display the attribute for any elementary school district within the selected
secondary school district by clicking on any of the school names listed in ‘School Layer’ list
dialog.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Boundary Verification Process
The Census Bureau requests that the Verification official(s) have access to all their original
annotation materials before beginning the review. These materials assist one in quickly finding
areas of update and ensuring that the Census Bureau made your update(s) correctly. Begin the
Verification process by logging into the CCT. The users ‘ISSUES’ window appears on the righthand side of the browser. The ‘ISSUES’ window will not contain any records until the user
reports an issue with a school district.

In the following example, let us assume that the first school district on your list of changes is
Princeton Elementary School District in Illinois. Begin your verification by clicking ‘ZOOM
TO’ and ‘LOCATION’ to display the ‘ZOOM TO LOCATION’ dialog windows. Complete the
dialog as shown below and then click the ‘ZOOM’ button.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

The GEOID field contains a 7-digit number comprised of the 2-digit state FIPS code (06 for
California) and the 5 digit Federal Local Education Agency (LEA) identification number.
The CCT will locate Princeton Elementary School District, zoom into the boundary, and
highlight the school district. The pink highlighted area shows the school district before the 20152016 SDRP changes, and the blue highlight shows area added under the current program.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

The user can view the information about Princeton Elementary School District by clicking
‘FEATURE INFORMATION’ and ‘ATTRIBUTES (POLYGONAL)’ and click within the
boundary of the school district. The CCT lists all school districts covering the point the user
clicked. Select about Princeton Elementary School District, which displays the details screen
shown below. This screen allows the user to confirm the correct spelling, Lo Grade, Hi Grade,
and SDLEA code of a school district.

The Census Bureau also requests that the user zoom into the blue highlighted area and verify that
the Census Bureau made the correction properly.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

In the example below, assume that the boundary of Princeton Elementary School District (in the
middle of the screen shot) is incorrect and should follow State Rte 26 east and 2450 East St
north.

The user should report an issue whenever they notice the Census Bureau missed a change (as in
this example) or made a change incorrectly. To report an issue click on ‘REPORT AN ISSUE’,
select ‘BY FEATURE’.

Click near the issue to display the ‘REPORT AN ISSUE’ dialog as shown below.
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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Note: Always select the ‘BY FEATURE’ option when reporting issues.

Select ‘Other’ from the drop-down ‘ISSUE TYPE’ list and enter a brief description of the
problem as shown below. Click ‘SUBMIT ISSUE’ to submit the issue to the Census Bureau.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

A confirmation message will appear. Click ‘OK’ to continue.

A balloon will appear on the map indicating that a user submitted an issue at that location. The
‘MY ISSUES’ tab in the ‘ISSUES’ window will include a record for every issue reported. The
user can click the blue circle of the record to display information about the issue and click the
magnifying glass to zoom to the location of the issue. The number in the left most column is
issue identification number automatically assigned by the CCT.
The ‘STATUS’ field currently shows ‘Under Review.’ The Census Bureau does not update this
field during the verification process.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Verifying Name, LEA Code, Grade Range Changes, and Dissolutions
Changes to the school district attributes such as school district name, LEA code, and grade range
changes, and dissolved school districts, can be verified in a list format using the ‘ATTRIBUTE
CHANGES’ tab in the ‘ISSUES WINDOW.’

The ‘ATTRIBUTE CHANGES’ tab lists the SDLEA, Name, Lo Grade, and Hi Grade of each school
district change submitted by the state sorted alphabetically by school district name. The user can easily
scan the list to verify the submitted changes. The user can click the magnifying glass icon next to the
name to zoom to the school on the map and view the boundaries as they currently exist in TIGER.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

The user can resize the ‘ATTRIBUTE CHANGES’ tab fields as necessary to display all of the
information contained in the field. First, move the mouse cursor directly over the boundary next to the
name of the field as shown in the red circle below.

The mouse cursor will change to from the mouse pointer to the figure shown below.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Click and hold the left mouse button and slide cursor left or right as required to display the field information.
Release the left mouse button to save the change.

School districts that have been dissolved will appear in the ‘ATTRIBUTE CHANGES’ tab with the text ‘(Dissolved)’
appended to the school district name as shown below.

Note: School district changes that contained ONLY boundary changes will not appear on the “ATTRIBUTE
CHANGES” tab.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

The figure below shows Adrian R-III School District has a ‘LO GRADE’ of KG. Let’s assume
that the ‘LO GRADE’ should be pre-kindergarten (PK). The user should report this
discrepancy.

First, double click on the magnifying class icon next to Adrian R-III School District’ to zoom to
the school district on the map.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Click on ‘REPORT AN ISSUE’ and then ‘BY FEATURE’ from the drop down list. Then, click
in the middle of Adrian R-III School District boundary to display the ‘REPORT AN ISSUE’
dialog window.

Set the ‘ISSUE TYPE’ to ‘Other’ and describe the problem in the ‘DESCRIPTION’ window as
shown below.

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

A confirmation message will appear. Click ‘OK’ to continue.

A new issue will appear in the ‘MY ISSUES’ tab for Adrian R-III School District.

Contact Information
We encourage you to contact any of the following Census Bureau Geography Division with any questions
about the SDRP verification by calling 301-763-1099.
•
•
•
•

Mr. Ian Millett
Mr. Nathan Jones
Ms. Lauren Kirsch
Mr. Ryan Short

E-mail: [email protected]
Fax number: 301-763-4710

Important: The Census Bureau will consider no response by the XXXX XX, 2016 deadline
as acceptance of the SDRP Verification Phase.
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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines

Appendix A: Map Legend

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School District Review Program: Verification User Guidelines