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Fetch California enrollment data

Source: R/fetch_enrollment.R
fetch_enr.Rd

Downloads and processes enrollment data from the California Department of Education DataQuest data files. Data is based on Census Day enrollment (first Wednesday in October).

Usage

fetch_enr(end_year, tidy = TRUE, use_cache = TRUE)

Arguments

end_year

A school year. Year is the end of the academic year - e.g., 2024 for the 2023-24 school year. Supports 1982-2025:

  • 2024-2025: Modern Census Day files with full demographic breakdowns

  • 2008-2023: Historical files with race/gender data and entity names

  • 1994-2007: Historical files with race/gender data (no entity names)

  • 1982-1993: Historical files with letter-based race codes

tidy

If TRUE (default), returns data in long (tidy) format with grade and subgroup columns. If FALSE, returns wide format with grade columns.

use_cache

If TRUE (default), uses locally cached data when available. Set to FALSE to force re-download from CDE.

Value

A tibble with enrollment data. In tidy format, includes columns:

  • end_year: School year end (integer)

  • cds_code: 14-digit CDS identifier

  • county_code: 2-digit county code

  • district_code: 5-digit district code

  • school_code: 7-digit school code

  • agg_level: Aggregation level (T=State, C=County, D=District, S=School)

  • county_name, district_name, school_name: Entity names

  • charter_status: Charter indicator (Y/N/All)

  • grade_level: Grade (TK, K, 01-12, or TOTAL). Note: TK is NA for 1982-2023.

  • reporting_category: CDE demographic category code

  • subgroup: Human-readable subgroup name

  • n_students: Enrollment count

Details

Historical data differs from modern (2024+) data in several ways:

  • Transitional Kindergarten (TK) data is not available (grade_tk is NA)

  • Charter status is not available (charter_status is "All")

  • District and county aggregates are computed from school-level data

  • Student group categories (SG_*) are not available

  • For 1994-2007: Entity names are not available (use CDS code to look up)

  • For 1982-1993: Race categories use different coding (mapped to modern codes)

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Get 2024 enrollment data (2023-24 school year)
enr_2024 <- fetch_enr(2024)

# Get historical data (2019-20 school year)
enr_2020 <- fetch_enr(2020)

# Get data from the 1990s
enr_1995 <- fetch_enr(1995)

# Get wide format (one column per grade)
enr_wide <- fetch_enr(2024, tidy = FALSE)

# Force fresh download (ignore cache)
enr_fresh <- fetch_enr(2024, use_cache = FALSE)

# Filter to school-level total enrollment
library(dplyr)
schools <- enr_2024 |>
  filter(agg_level == "S", reporting_category == "TA", grade_level == "TOTAL")
} # }