Population 

Division 

Evaluation of April 1, 2000 School District Population 

Estimates Based on the Synthetic Ratio Method 

by 

Monique Oosse 

Working Paper No. 74 

June 2004 

This paper reports the results of research and analysis undertaken by the U.S. Census 

Bureau staff. It has undergone a Census Bureau review more limited in scope than that 

given to Official Census Bureau publications. This report is released to inform interested 

parties of ongoing research and to encourage discussion of work in progress. 
Evaluation of April 1, 2000 School District Population Estimates 

Based on the Synthetic Ratio Method 

Abstract 

The Department of Education uses school district population estimates in 

combination with estimates of the numbers of children in poverty to distribute billions of 

dollars in federal funds to school districts. This report evaluates the synthetic ratio 

method used to produce postcensal school district estimates of the total population and 

the school-age population (5 to 17 years). The synthetic ratio method assumes that the 

ratio of the school district population to the county population, as measured in the most 

recent decennial census, remains constant throughout the estimate period. To evaluate 

the method, school district population estimates for April 1, 2000 are produced from the 

1990 census population of school districts and counties and the April 1, 2000 county 

population estimates. The accuracy of the April 1, 2000 estimates is measured by 

comparison with Census 2000 enumeration data. The Mean Algebraic Percent Error 

(MALPE), the Mean Absolute Percent Error (MAPE), and the Weighted Mean Absolute 

Percent Error are calculated for the school district population estimates. The average 

errors are calculated for regions, states, school district types, school district population 

size in 1990 and 2000, and the percent population change from 1990 to 2000. The results 

identify the characteristics of school districts for which the synthetic ratio method 

performs relatively well and for which the method appears to generate biased estimates. 

i 
Table of Contents 

I. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 

II. Methods and Data.......................................................................................................... 3 

A. Base Population: 1990 Census Data......................................................................... 5 

B. Estimates of Change Over Time: April 1, 2000 County Population Estimates........ 6 

C. Standard for Calculating Errors: Census 2000 Data................................................. 7 

III. Results: April 1, 2000 School District Estimates........................................................ 9 

A. School-Age Population Estimates ........................................................................... 10 

B. Total Population Estimates ...................................................................................... 11 

C. Estimating the Error Attributed to the Synthetic Ratio Method ............................... 12 

D. Comparisons with Past Research............................................................................. 13 

IV. Evaluation.................................................................................................................. 14 

A. 1990 Census Population .......................................................................................... 14 

B. Census 2000 Population........................................................................................... 16 

C. Percent Population Change, 1990 – 2000................................................................ 17 

D. Census Divisions ..................................................................................................... 18 

E. Type of School District ............................................................................................ 20 

F. Errors for School Districts with Total Populations of 20,000 or More.................... 22 

G. Errors for School Districts that Were Not Coterminous with County Boundaries... 22 

V. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 24 

Appendix A: Identifying Overlapping School Districts .................................................. 25 

Appendix B: Cohort-Component and Ratio Methods for Calculating April 1, 2000 

County Estimates .............................................................................................................. 27 

Appendix C: Treatment of 1990 Census and Census 2000 School District Files ........... 29 

References......................................................................................................................... 31 

Figures 

Figure 1. Unweighted and Weighted Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the 

April 1, 2000 School District Estimates of the Total and School-Age Populations: 

Estimates Based on April 1, 2000 County Estimates and Census 2000 County 

Enumeration Data................................................................................32 

Figure 2. Mean Algebraic Percent Errors (MALPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of 

the Total Population and School-Age Population in School Districts Compared with the 

Census 2000 Enumerated Population by School District Size in the 1990 Census......33 

Figure 3. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

School-Age Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 

Enumerated Population by School District Size in the 1990 Census........................34 

Figure 4. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

Total Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated 

Population by School District Size in the 1990 Census....................................35 

Figure 5. Mean Algebraic Percent Errors (MALPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of 

the Total Population and School-Age Population in School Districts Compared with the 

Census 2000 Enumerated Population by School District Size in Census 2000.........36 

ii 
Figure 6. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

School-Age Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 

Enumerated Population by School District Size in Census 2000..............................37 

Figure 7. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

Total Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated 

Population by School District Size in Census 2000............................................38 

Figure 8. Mean Algebraic Percent Errors (MALPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of 

the Total and School-Age Populations in School Districts Compared with the Census 

2000 Enumerated Population by Ten-Year Percent Change in School District 

Populations........................................................................................39 

Figure 9. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

School-Age Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 

Enumerated Population by Ten-Year Percent Change in the School District School-Age 

Population..........................................................................................40 

Figure 10. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

Total Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated 

Population by Ten-Year Percent Change in the School District Total Population......41 

Figure 11. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

School-Age Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 

Enumerated Population by School District Type............................................42 

Figure 12. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

Total Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated 

Population by School District Type..............................................................43 

Tables 

Table 1. Number of School Districts Included and Excluded from Analyses: 2000.....44 

Table 2. Mean Algebraic Percent Errors (MALPE) and Standard Deviations of Errors for 

the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the School-Age Population in School Districts Compared 

with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population by State....................................45 

Table 3. Unweighted and Weighted Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) and 

Standard Deviations of Errors for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the School-Age 

Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population 

by State............................................................................................46 

Table 4. Mean Algebraic Percent Errors (MALPE) and Standard Deviations of Errors for 

the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the Total Population in School Districts Compared with 

the Census 2000 Enumerated Population by State..........................................47 

Table 5. Unweighted and Weighted Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) and 

Standard Deviations of Errors for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the Total Population in 

School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population by State....48 

Table 6. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

School-Age Population in Two Sets of School Districts Compared with the Census 

2000 Enumerated Population by State.........................................................49 

iii 
Table 7. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

Total Population in Two Sets of School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 

Enumerated Population by State...............................................................50 

Table 8. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) and Mean Algebraic Percent Errors 

(MALPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the School-Age Population in School 

Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population by School District 

Characteristics....................................................................................51 

Table 9. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) and Mean Algebraic Percent Errors 

(MALPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the Total Population in School Districts 

Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population by School District 

Characteristics....................................................................................52 

Table 10. Number of School Districts and Distribution of the School-Age Population by 

the Total School District Population: 1990 and 2000.......................................53 

Table 11. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

School-Age Population in Two Sets of School Districts Compared with the Census 

2000 Enumerated Population by School District Characteristics...........................54 

Table 12. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

Total Population in Two Sets of School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 

Enumerated Population by School District Characteristics.................................55 

Table 13. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

School-Age Population and Total Population in School Districts Compared with the 

Census 2000 Enumerated Population by School District Characteristics for School 

Districts with 1990 Census Populations of 20,000 or More................................56 

Table 14. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

School-Age Population and Total Population in Two Sets of School Districts Compared 

with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population for Selected States........................57 

Table 15. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

School-Age Population in Two Sets of School Districts Compared with the Census 

2000 Enumerated Population by School District Characteristics...........................58 

Table 16. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

Total Population in Two Sets of School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 

Enumerated Population by School District Characteristics.................................59 

Population Division Working Paper Series..................................................60 

iv 
I. Introduction 

Each year the United States Department of Education (DOE) distributes more 

than seven billion dollars to public school districts in order to supplement programs for 

educationally disadvantaged children. Prior to 1997, distributions to school districts 

made under Title 1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act were based on the 

number of school-age children in poverty as enumerated in the most recent decennial 

census. The funds were distributed to counties and then the county funds were 

distributed to school districts by state governments. Along with other changes enacted 

for the 1997-1998 school year, Congress mandated that the DOE distribute Title 1 funds 

directly to school districts based on intercensal updates of the estimated number of 

school-age children in poverty. 

The Census Bureau was given the task of conducting research and updating 

estimates of the number of poor school-age children between decennial censuses. The 

Population Division is responsible for the production of the population estimates and the 

Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) Program produces estimates of the 

number of poor school-age children by school district. This report evaluates the current 

methodology used to create intercensal estimates of the school district population. 

The 1996 and 1998 school district estimates were produced using a synthetic ratio 

method. This approach was used to calculate both the total and school-age (5 to 17 

years) populations by school district. Though the synthetic ratio method makes efficient 

use of easily available data, there are some concerns about the accuracy of the estimates it 

produces and the assumptions it requires. Inherent to the synthetic ratio method is the 

assumption that the ratio of a school district population to the corresponding county 

population remains constant over time. To the extent that a school district population 

grows or declines at different rates than that of the county or counties in which the school 

district lies, the estimate will be erroneous. The impact of this assumption and related 

biases becomes greater for dates further from the decennial census used as the base 

population for the estimates. Inaccuracies in the county population estimates are also 

incorporated into the school district estimates. 

1
 
Miller (2001) evaluated the synthetic ratio method by calculating April 1, 1990 

school district population estimates from 1980 census data and April 1, 1990 county 

estimates. The April 1, 1990 school district estimates were compared with the school 

district populations enumerated in the 1990 census to determine the accuracy and biases 

of the synthetic ratio method. The largest proportional errors occurred for small school 

districts, districts with the highest and lowest poverty rates, and districts with the highest 

and lowest growth rates. 

This report continues the effort to evaluate the results of the synthetic ratio 

method by producing April 1, 2000 school district population estimates based on the 

1990 census and April 1, 2000 county estimates. These estimates were compared to the 

school district populations enumerated in Census 2000. Section II describes the synthetic 

ratio method and assumptions and the data used to produce and evaluate the school 

district population estimates. Section III presents the estimate results and calculates the 

amount of error attributable to the county estimates and the amount of error attributable 

to the synthetic ratio method and related assumptions. Section IV evaluates the level of 

error associated with school district size, growth, geographic region, and district type. 

Section V summarizes the findings from this evaluation, indicating where the synthetic 

ratio method was fairly accurate and where other methods may need to be developed in 

order to improve the estimates. 

2
 
II. Methods and Data 

The synthetic ratio method calculates the population in school districts by 

assuming that the ratio of the school district population to the county population remains 

constant over time. In other words, the populations of all school districts or portions of 

school districts within a county (referred to as “school district pieces”) change at the 

same rate. The method requires county and school district level census data as the 

starting population and county population estimates for the time period of interest. The 

synthetic ratio method does not employ a time-sensitive rate of change, so the method 

can be applied to any time interval without special treatment. 

The county population estimates used to calculate the changes in the school 

district populations are produced annually using a cohort-component method. The 

cohort-component method begins with the most recent census population by county and 

adds or subtracts estimates of four components of population change as calculated for the 

estimate time period. Births, deaths, and net internal and international migration are 

calculated from various administrative records. To the degree that the assumptions 

associated with county estimates methodology and coverage in the data sources are 

inaccurate, the school district estimates will be similarly biased. 

Using the 1990 census population counts and April 1, 2000 county estimates, the 

estimated total population in school districts was calculated with the following ratio: 

P sd, 2000 = P sd, 1990 * P ct, 2000 / P ct, 1990 

Where: 

P sd, 2000 = total population estimated for each school district piece for April 1, 

2000 

P sd, 1990 = total population enumerated for each school district piece in the 1990 

census 

P ct, 2000 = total estimated county population for April 1, 2000 for the county in 

which the school district piece lies 

3
 
P ct, 1990 = total county population enumerated in the 1990 census for the county in 

which the school district piece lies 

Using the 1990 census population counts and April 1, 2000 county estimates, the 

estimated school-age (5 to 17 years) population in school districts was calculated with the 

following ratio: 

C sd, 2000 = C sd, 1990 * C ct, 2000 / C ct, 1990 

Where: 

C sd, 2000 = estimated school-age population for each school district piece for April 

1, 2000 

C sd, 1990 = school-age population enumerated for each school district piece in the 

1990 census 

C ct, 2000 = estimated school-age population by county for April 1, 2000 for the 

county in which the school district piece lies 

C ct, 1990 = school-age population by county enumerated in the 1990 census for the 

county in which the school district piece lies 

The ratios of school district piece populations to county populations in 1990 were 

applied to each April 1, 2000 county estimate to calculate April 1, 2000 preliminary 

population estimates for school district pieces. These preliminary estimates were 

rounded and the sums were controlled to equal the April 1, 2000 county population 

estimates as conventional in the Population Division’s Population Estimates Branch 

(PEB) products and as described in Appendix A. 

To calculate total population estimates for school districts that cross county 

boundaries, the school district piece estimates were summed by school districts. These 

sums are essentially weighted averages of the population change in the relevant counties, 

weighted by the school district piece populations and applied to the school district base 

populations. 

4
 
A. Base Population: 1990 Census Data 

Estimating the population in school districts is complicated by a number of 

factors. First, school districts boundaries usually do not match the boundaries of other 

governmental units, such as counties or cities, for which data are readily available. 

School districts may cross county and other place boundaries or serve only portions of 

counties or places. Second, school districts may annex new territory, lose territory, open, 

or close, resulting in changes to school district boundaries over time. Third, some school 

districts overlap and share the same pieces of land because the districts serve only limited 

grade ranges. Each of these issues is addressed by the treatment of the 1990 census data 

used as the base population for the April 1, 2000 school district population estimates. 

In order to evaluate the synthetic ratio approach with the most consistent data 

available, the starting school district populations from the 1990 census data were 

tabulated by the Geography Division according to 1999-2000 school district boundaries. 

These school district boundaries were combined with county boundaries to create 

separate population counts for each portion of a school district in each county. These are 

referred to as “school district pieces” in this report. In addition to portions of school 

districts in each county, there are some areas of land for which there are no school 

districts. Population counts for these geographies were also included in the 1990 census 

data used in this evaluation and were tabulated by state and county. 

Where school districts serve only limited grade ranges, SAIPE assigned the 

school-age population from the 1990 census to a single school district based on the ageto-grade distribution from Current Population Survey (CPS) data (averages of 1988, 

1989, and 1990 data). For example, an Elementary School District (ESD) and Secondary 

School District (SSD) share the same geography. All children ages 5 to 10 would be 

assigned to the ESD, all children ages 14 to 17 would be assigned to the SSD, and the 

children ages 11 to 13 would be divided between the two districts according to the CPS 

age-to-grade distributions. These children, as well as those who reside in nonoverlapping school districts, are referred to as “relevant children” in this report (U.S. 

Census Bureau 2002). The process of assigning relevant children ensures that the 1990 

data and subsequent estimates of school-age children sum to match county and state 

5
 
totals for the population ages 5 to 17. School-age children were assigned to overlapping 

school districts in this manner for 22.3 percent of school districts in the 1990 census data. 

This same process of assigning relevant children cannot be used to assign the total 

population to only one school district as the logic of assigning non-school-age people to a 

particular grade range does not apply. Consequently, overlapping school districts may 

count the same total population more than once and the 1990 census data and subsequent 

estimates of the total population will not sum to match county and state totals. 

B. Estimates of Change Over Time: April 1, 2000 County Population Estimates 

The April 1, 2000 estimates of the population by counties were produced by the 

PEB using a cohort-component methodology. These April 1, 2000 estimates were 

produced in order to evaluate the accuracy of the county estimates produced for the 1990s 

by comparing the results with Census 2000 data. To calculate postcensal estimates with 

the cohort-component method, estimates of births and net internal and international 

migration were added to the starting 1990 census populations by county, and deaths were 

subtracted from the census populations. These components (births, deaths, and 

migration) were calculated from Internal Revenue Service, Immigration and 

Naturalization Service, and Social Security Administration, and birth and death 

registration (vital statistics) records for the 10-year time period since the 1990 census. 

The Administrative Records and Methodology Branch (ARMR) in the Population 

Division also produced county population estimates by single years of age (0 to 85), sex, 

race, and Hispanic origin. The detailed county estimates were collapsed by sex, race, and 

Hispanic origin into the two sets of county populations required by the school district 

estimates, the total population and school-age children (5 to 17 years). 

A second set of April 1, 2000 county estimates was also used to calculate school 

district population estimates in the preliminary analyses. These county estimates were 

created using a ratio methodology. Only the cohort-component method will be used for 

the post-Census 2000 county estimates and, therefore, only the school district estimates 

based on the cohort-component county estimates are discussed in Sections III and IV of 

6
 
 

 

this report. Appendix B contains a summary of the findings using the ratio-based April 1, 

2000 county estimates. 

C. Standard for Calculating Errors: Census 2000 Data 

Census 2000 enumeration data were used to evaluate the accuracy of the April 1, 

2000 school district population estimates.1 The Census 2000 data were tabulated by 

2001-2002 school district boundaries. These boundaries closely matched the 1999-2000 

boundaries used to tabulate the 1990 census data and subsequent estimates based on those 

data. Though the 1990 census and Census 2000 files were not exact matches, they were 

sufficiently similar for the purposes of this research. However, there were some 

differences in the data that required special treatment, as described in Appendix C. 

In addition to using Census 2000 school district data as a standard to evaluate the 

accuracy of the synthetic ratio method, Census 2000 county populations were used in 

place of the April 1, 2000 county estimates to produce a set of school district estimates 

that do not contain errors due to the county estimates. Comparing the two sets of 

estimates distinguished the error attributable to the synthetic ratio method and related 

assumptions from the error attributable to the county estimates. 

Both sets of school district estimates (using April 1, 2000 county estimates and 

Census 2000 county populations) were compared to the Census 2000 school district 

populations as enumerated using the Mean Algebraic Percent Error (MALPE) and the 

Mean Absolute Percent Error (MAPE). The MALPE is the sum of the percent 

differences between each school district estimate and the corresponding Census 2000 

population as enumerated divided by the number of school districts. Positive mean 

algebraic percent errors indicate overestimation of the school district populations on 

average, and negative errors indicate underestimation of the school district populations. 

The MAPE is computed in a similar manner, except that the numerator is the sum of the 

absolute percent differences between the estimates and the Census 2000 values. The 

MAPE measures the overall accuracy of the estimates. Weighted MAPEs were also 

1

 Census 2000 population data include modifications as documented in the Count Question Resolution 

program, updates from the Boundary and Annexation Survey, and geographic program revisions. 

7
 
calculated to account for the size of the school district populations (total or school-age) in 

Census 2000. MALPEs and MAPEs were only computed for school districts with total 

or school-age populations of 30 or more in Census 2000 because population estimates for 

smaller numbers are particularly unreliable. 

8
 
III. Results: April 1, 2000 School District Estimates 

As noted above, the school district estimates were compared with the Census 

2000 school district populations as enumerated (see Footnote 1) by calculating the Mean 

Algebraic Percent Errors (MALPEs) and Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPEs). The 

synthetic ratio method produced estimates for a few school districts with very large errors 

that had very large effects on the MALPEs and MAPEs (i.e., one school district estimate 

was 52 times larger than the Census 2000 population). Therefore, various subsets of 

school districts were tested to determine which allowed for the most useful analyses and 

still allowed for the inclusion of as many school districts as possible. 

In addition to excluding school districts with Census 2000 populations (total or 

school-age) of less than 30 and those with boundary errors from the calculations of the 

MALPEs and MAPEs (see Appendix C), school districts were excluded for two other 

reasons. First, 8 extreme outliers, defined as estimates that are 90 percent smaller or 5 

times larger than the Census 2000 populations, were omitted from the statistics for the 

total population because they distorted the unweighted MAPEs and MALPEs to such a 

degree that they lost meaning. Three extreme outliers were omitted from the MAPE and 

MALPE calculations for the school-age population (see Table 1). Second, four school 

districts (two in Alaska and one each in Alabama and Maine) with extremely large errors 

and population changes associated with military base closures were excluded from the 

analyses. Omitting these outliers appeared justified since county population estimates 

may appropriately account for population changes due to military base closures, but they 

cannot account for population redistribution within counties. 

The MALPE and MAPE statistics were also calculated for a subset of school 

districts that contained populations of 100 or more, but this restriction did not noticeably 

improve the estimates over omitting just the extreme outliers. The latter option was 

selected since it allowed a larger number of school districts to be retained in the analyses. 

With these omissions, the analyses were performed on 14,256 (99.6 percent of 14,310) 

school districts for the total population and 13,876 (97.0 percent of 14,310) school 

districts for the school-age population. Though the analyses are more meaningful with 

these omissions, it is still important to consider outliers when developing alternative 

9
 
 

methods for estimating school district populations because these are the school districts 

for which improved estimates would be most valuable. 

A. School-Age Population Estimates 

Table 2 shows the MALPEs for the school-age population estimates by state. The 

school district population was underestimated by 3.8 percent on average for the nation, 

and was underestimated in 48 states and the District of Columbia. The District of 

Columbia, as a single school district, was underestimated by 13.5 percent followed by 

Delaware at 10.0 percent. North Carolina and Rhode Island were the only states for 

which the average error was overestimated, but only at 0.2 and 0.3 percent, respectively. 

Table 2 also includes standard deviations for the MALPEs, which indicate the spread of 

the errors. The estimates for Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico had 

relatively large standard deviations. The difficulties with estimating the school district 

populations in these states is likely due to the areas with large population growth during 

the 1990s (see Section IV.C. below). Standard deviations were also relatively large for 

Montana, Nebraska, and North Dakota, states that contain school districts with relatively 

small populations, which are associated with large errors (see Section IV.A. and IV. B. 

below). States such as Maryland, Florida, Louisiana, and West Virginia had the smallest 

standard deviations for the errors, probably because most or all of the school district 

boundaries in these states are coterminous with county boundaries. Consequently, most 

of the errors for the school districts in these states were identical to the errors in the 

county population estimates and no additional error was added by the synthetic ratio 

method. Also, these errors tend to apply to larger populations than in most other school 

districts, and larger school districts generally have smaller errors (see Section IV.A. and 

IV.B. below). 

Table 3 shows unweighted and weighted MAPEs for the school-age population. 

These figures average absolute errors and are consistent with the MALPEs. The MAPE 

for the United States was 12.9 percent, ranging from 4.5 percent for West Virginia to 

25.0 percent for Arizona. As with the MALPEs, the MAPEs were highest for states that 

experienced rapid growth in the 1990s (Texas, New Mexico, California, and Arizona) 

10
 
and for states with smaller school district populations (North Dakota, Nebraska, and 

Montana). Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona were also among the states with the largest 

MAPEs for the county estimates (Blumerman and Christenson 2002), but the MAPE for 

California was relatively small. This suggests that though the accuracy of the county 

estimates has an impact on the accuracy of the school district estimates, the synthetic 

ratio method and assumptions also have relatively large effects. 

Weighting the MAPEs by the Census 2000 school-age population generally 

reduces the levels of the MAPEs, compared with the unweighted MAPEs (see Table 3). 

The weighted MAPE for the United States was 9.3 percent, ranging from 3.0 percent for 

Nevada to 17.4 percent for Arizona. Weighting the MAPEs substantially reduces the 

average errors for states with some of the largest unweighted MAPEs, such as North 

Dakota, Nebraska, California, Texas, Montana, and Arizona. This supports the 

conclusion that small school districts in some of these states tend to have relatively large 

errors. 

B. Total Population Estimates 

Table 4 shows the mean percent errors between the estimated April 1, 2000 total 

school district population and Census 2000 enumerated data. On average, the school 

district estimates were 0.1 percent too high for the nation. The MALPEs for the total 

population estimates ranged from –8.6 percent for Washington DC to 6.7 percent for 

California. The total population of school districts was underestimated on average for 33 

states and the District of Columbia and overestimated on average for 17 states. As with 

the school-age population, the standard deviations of the errors for the total population 

estimates were largest for Arizona, Texas, Montana, Nebraska, and California. Some of 

the states with the smallest standard deviations, like Rhode Island, North Carolina, 

Louisiana, and West Virginia, had relatively low population growth in the 1990s, and 

others, like Virginia, Maryland, and Florida, contain school district boundaries that are 

coterminous with county boundaries. 

For the nation, the unweighted MAPE for the estimates of the total population is 

9.1 percent and the weighted MAPE was 6.7 percent (see Table 5). The unweighted 

MAPEs for the estimates of the total population in school districts ranged from 1.9 

11
 
percent for Maryland to 23.4 percent for Arizona. California (16.8 percent MAPE) and 

Arizona contained more outliers than the other states, but many were still retained in the 

analyses because the school districts did not meet the strict criteria to be excluded as 

extreme outliers. The average size of the errors was greatly reduced when weighting by 

the Census 2000 school district population, indicating that the estimates for larger school 

districts tend to be more accurate than those for smaller school districts (see Sections 

IV.A. and IV. B.). 

C. Estimating the Error Attributed to the Synthetic Ratio Method 

One element of the synthetic ratio formula is a postcensal estimate of the county 

population for the time period of interest. County estimates contain errors from the input 

data, methodology, and assumptions that are introduced into the school district estimates. 

To evaluate the impact of the errors from the county estimates, a set of school district 

population estimates was created using Census 2000 county data in place of April 1, 2000 

county estimates. This eliminated the errors attributed to the county estimates from the 

school district population estimates. The differences between the school district 

estimates based on Census 2000 county data and the actual Census 2000 school district 

populations were errors due to either differences in coverage and accuracy for the 1990 

census and Census 2000 or the synthetic ratio method. The differences between the 

school district estimates based on Census 2000 county data and the school district 

estimates based on April 1, 2000 county estimates were errors due to inaccuracies in the 

county estimates. 

Figure 1 shows unweighted and weighted MAPEs for the total and school-age 

populations in school districts as estimated from the April 1, 2000 county estimates and 

from Census 2000 county data. For both the total and school-age population estimates, 

the mean errors for the school district estimates that used Census 2000 county data were 

at least three-fourths of the mean errors for the estimates based on April 1, 2000 county 

estimates. This suggests that a relatively large portion of the inaccuracy in the school 

district population estimates may be attributed to the synthetic ratio method rather than 

errors in the county estimates. 

12
 
 

D. Comparisons with Past Research 

Miller (2001) evaluated the synthetic ratio method with 1980 Census-based 

estimates of the school district population in April 1, 1990 using 1990 census data as a 

standard. For the school-age population, the MAPE of 12.9 percent for the April 1, 2000 

estimates was an improvement over the MAPE of 16.9 percent for the April 1, 1990 

estimates. Improvements of similar magnitude occurred for weighted MAPEs: 9.3 

percent for the 2000 estimates and 12.0 percent for the 1990 estimates. 

For the total population, the 2000 estimates had a MAPE of 9.1 percent, more 

accurate than the 1990 estimates with a MAPE of 13.3 percent (Miller 2001). The 

weighted MAPE for the 1990 estimates was 9.6 percent and the weighted MAPE for the 

2000 estimates was 6.7 percent. The apparent improvement from the 1980 Census-based 

estimates was at least partly due to the increased accuracy of the county estimates for the 

1990s compared with the county estimates for the 1980s. 

The evaluation of the 1980 Census-based estimates for 1990 included only 60.4 

percent of school districts (Miller 2001), while almost all the school districts were 

included in the results presented in this report because the 1990 census data were 

tabulated by 1999-2000 school district boundaries. Though including more school 

districts may lead to lower MAPEs, when the evaluation was limited to a set of school 

districts that was more comparable to the Miller (2001) evaluation,2

 the mean errors were 

even smaller than those described above. For the school-age population estimates the 

MAPE was 11.6 percent for the nation, ranging from 4.9 percent for Louisiana (with 

only four school districts selected) to 24.7 percent for Arizona (see Table 6). The MAPE 

of the smaller set of school districts for the total population estimates was 8.1 percent, 

ranging from 2.2 percent for Hawaii to 24.9 percent for Arizona (see Table 7). 

2 This subset of school districts excluded Elementary and Secondary School Districts and school districts 

with boundaries that are coterminous with county boundaries in addition to those described in Appendix C 

and Section III. 

13
 
 

IV. Evaluation 

The accuracy of the school district estimates were evaluated for a number of 

school district characteristics based on prior research on school district poverty and 

population estimates (Miller 2001; National Research Council 2000). Keeping the 

characteristics examined consistent allows for comparisons across decades to identify 

improvements in estimation methods. The accuracy of the school district estimates was 

examined for the following characteristics of school districts: 

A. Total census population in 1990; 

B. Total census population in 2000; 

C. Percent change in census population from 1990 to 2000; 

D. Census division; and 

E. School district type. 

See Tables 8 and 9 for summaries of the MALPEs and MAPEs by these 

characteristics of school districts. Analyzing the accuracy of the school district estimates 

using these characteristics helps determine the types of school districts for which the 

synthetic ratio method works relatively well and for the types for which this approach is 

problematic. Where the accuracy of the school districts estimates differs by geography, 

size, or population change, bias in the population estimates may adversely affect the 

estimates of the percent of children in poverty (when combined with SAIPE’s poverty 

estimates) and the distribution of Title I federal funds to school districts. 

A. 1990 Census Population 

Almost half (46.0 percent) of school districts had a total population under 5,000 in 

1990. These school districts accounted for only 5.7 percent of the school-age population. 

School districts with 20,000 or more people represented 19.3 percent of all school 

districts, but contained 73.0 percent of the school-age children in 1990 (see Table 10). 

As larger school districts were more likely to make up larger proportions of the county 

14
 
populations, it may be easier to estimate the school district populations for larger school 

districts with the synthetic ratio method. 

Figure 2 shows the MALPEs for the total and school-age populations by the 

school district total population size in the 1990 census. The synthetic ratio method 

consistently underestimated the school-age population for all size categories of school 

districts. The largest MALPE was for school districts with total populations of 10,000 to 

19,999, which were underestimated by 5.4 percent. 

For school districts with less than 5,000 people, the synthetic ratio method 

overestimated the total population by 2.0 percent. The total population was 

underestimated for all larger school districts by 1.2 to 2.0 percent (MALPEs). This is in 

contrast to the findings reported for the 1980 Census-based estimates of the 1990 

population where the total population was overestimated for all school districts, 

particularly the largest and smallest (Miller 2001). The differences were likely due to 

differences in errors for the county estimates across decades where the county population 

estimates were too high for the 1980s and too low for the 1990s (Blumerman and 

Christenson 2002). 

Figure 3 presents the unweighted and weighted MAPEs for the estimates of the 

school-age populations by the school district size in 1990. Similar to the results found in 

the previous work (Miller 2001), the unweighted error for school districts with less than 

5,000 people (16.2 percent) is about 50 percent higher than the errors for larger school 

districts (ranging from 9.2 to 11.1 percent). Weighting the MAPEs by the school-age 

population in Census 2000 somewhat reduced the differences in errors across size 

categories, but there was still a steady decline in average errors with increasing school 

district size. Figure 4 shows similar results for the total population estimates: the larger 

the school districts, the smaller the average errors. 

The school-age population estimates had larger errors (MALPEs and MAPEs) 

than for the total population, which suggests that it is more difficult to correctly distribute 

the population by age within counties (and consequently school districts) than to estimate 

the total county (and school district) populations. 

15
 
B. Census 2000 Population 

Of the 14,310 school districts, 6,252 (43.7 percent) had total populations of less 

than 5,000 in Census 2000, a decline from 46.0 percent in 1990 (see Table 10). These 

school districts accounted for only 4.5 percent of the school-age population. School 

districts with 20,000 or more people represented 21.8 percent of all school districts, but 

contained 77.3 percent of the school-age children in 2000. Both the proportion of large 

school districts and the proportion of children in those districts were higher in Census 

2000 than in the 1990 census. 

Not surprisingly, the relationship between the size of the school districts in 2000 

and the size of the average errors was similar to that for the size of the school districts in 

1990. Figure 5 shows that the school-age population was underestimated in all sizes of 

school districts, ranging from -2.2 percent for school districts with under 5,000 people to 

–6.1 percent for school districts with 20,000 to 39,999 people. The total population was 

overestimated by 3.0 percent for school districts with less than 5,000 people and was 

underestimated for all other school district size categories by 1.4 percent to 3.2 percent. 

The unweighted MAPEs for the school-age population were almost two-thirds 

higher for school districts with less than 5,000 people than for larger school districts (see 

Figure 6). Weighting the MAPEs by the school-age population in Census 2000 reduced 

the average errors for both the largest and smallest school districts, but changed the 

MAPE values for the other size categories very little. The smallest school districts also 

had the largest unweighted MAPEs for the total population, 11.5 percent for school 

districts with populations under 5,000 and 7.0 to 7.5 percent for the larger school districts 

(see Figure 7). As with the school-age population, the differences in average errors by 

school district size were substantially reduced when weighted by population. These 

findings suggest that smaller school districts may need special treatment in future school 

district estimates and research. 

The relationship between school district size and average errors was similar to 

that found for county size and average errors. When April 1, 2000 county estimates were 

compared with the Census 2000 results, larger counties tended to have lower MAPEs. 

This was also true when comparing April 1, 1990 estimates with the 1990 census data 

(Blumerman and Christenson 2002). The similarities may be due to both the nature of 

16
 
creating population estimates and the inclusion of county estimates in the calculation of 

school district population estimates. 

C. Percent Population Change, 1990 – 2000 

The differences in the accuracy of the estimates for the total and school-age 

populations in school districts by the percent of population change from 1990 to 2000 are 

striking. Figure 8 shows that for school districts with school-age population declines of 

more than 10 percent, the estimates of the school-age population were on average too 

high (MALPE of 18.0 percent). The estimates for school districts with population 

increases of 10 percent or more were on average 12.9 percent too low. The synthetic 

ratio method overestimated by 25.7 percent (MALPE) the total population for school 

districts with more than a ten percent decline in population in the 1990s. The school 

districts that experienced total population declines of 5 percent to 10 percent were 

overestimated by 7.7 percent. School districts with population increases of 10 percent or 

more were underestimated by 8.1 percent. For school districts with more moderate 

population changes (decreases up to 5 percent through increases up to 10 percent), the 

synthetic ratio method performed relatively well, with MALPEs of –0.5 percent to 4.5 

percent for the total population and –3.7 percent to 0.9 percent for the school-age 

population. 

The unweighted MAPE for school districts with declines in the school-age 

population of 10 percent or more was 20.4 percent (see Figure 9). The next largest 

MAPE was for school districts with population increases of 10 percent or more (14.5 

percent). For the school districts with changes of 10 percent or less, the MAPEs show 

that the average errors were about the same (7.8 to 8.6 percent). Weighting the MAPEs 

again reduced the differences among the categories of population change, but still shows 

that the largest errors occurred for the school districts with the largest percent changes. 

For school districts where the total population declined by more than 10 percent 

between 1990 and 2000, the MAPE was 26.1 percent for the total population estimates, 

over twice the mean errors for school districts that experienced population declines of 

less than ten percent or population growth (ranging from 4.6 percent to 10.3 percent, see 

17
 
 

 

 

Figure 10). The second largest MAPE was for school districts with population increases 

of ten percent or more (10.3 percent). Weighting the MAPEs with the Census 2000 

population reduced the MAPE for school districts with the largest population declines by 

over half to 12.6 percent. 

The synthetic ratio method does not perform well when estimating school districts 

with extreme population changes, though the errors are attributed partly to errors in the 

county estimates. This was also true when comparing April 1, 2000 county estimates 

with Census 2000 data. Counties with the largest percent population change from 1990 

to 2000, whether growth or decline, had the largest MAPEs (Blumerman and Christenson 

2002). These findings demonstrate how the assumption that school district populations 

change at the same rates as the counties in which they lie fails to capture large population 

changes and redistribution within these counties. These results also suggest that small 

school districts with relatively large population changes are among the most difficult to 

estimate accurately. 

D. Census Divisions 

As described above (Sections III.A. and III.B.), the school district population can 

be difficult to estimate for states with relatively large population changes, such as 

California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. States with many small school districts 

and relatively small school district populations, such as Nebraska, North Dakota, and 

Montana, also had relatively large errors when comparing the estimates to the Census 

2000 standard (see Tables 2 through 5). 

Tables 8 and 9 summarize differences in the accuracy of the school district 

population estimates by Census Division.3

 The estimates produced with the synthetic 

ratio method underestimated the school-age population in all divisions, particularly in the 

3

 Census Regions and Divisions are the Northeast Region: New England – Maine, New Hampshire, 

Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut; Middle Atlantic – New York, New Jersey, and 

Pennsylvania; Midwest Region: East North Central – Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin; 

West North Central – Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas; 

South Region: South Atlantic – Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, North 

Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida; East South Central – Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and 

Mississippi; West South Central – Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas; West Region: Mountain – 

18
 
 

south and east (West South Central, South Atlantic, Middle Atlantic, New England, and 

East South Central Divisions), but also in the Mountain Division. The total population 

was underestimated in the New England and South Atlantic Divisions and overestimated 

in the West North Central and Pacific Divisions. The mean errors were quite small for 

the other five Census Divisions. The relatively small differences across Divisions were 

likely due to the effects of combining many sizes of school districts with large ranges of 

population changes into single categories. 

Consistent with the findings for individual states, the Pacific and Mountain 

Divisions had the largest MAPEs for the total and school-age population estimates. 

These Divisions include the states of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, 

Oregon, Utah, and Washington, some of the fastest growing states during the 1990s. The 

smallest MAPEs were in the South Atlantic and East South Central Divisions, which 

contain some of the states with the slowest growth in the past decade, as well as five of 

the states for which most or all of the school district boundaries were identical to county 

boundaries. The states with coterminous county and school district boundaries have 

lower errors on average because the county population estimates were more accurate than 

the school district estimates. Weighting the errors by population greatly reduced the 

differences in the errors by Census Division. 

Similar to what was found with the bias associated with the percent change in 

school districts from 1990 to 2000, Census Divisions that experienced the largest 

population growth from 1990 to 2000 contained school districts whose populations were 

the most difficult to estimate accurately. These findings suggest that the synthetic ratio 

method may yield school district population estimates of acceptable accuracy for most 

states and Census Divisions. The development of alternative methodology could focus 

on the fastest changing areas. 

Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada; Pacific – Washington, 

Oregon, California, Alaska, and Hawaii. 

19
 
E. Type of School District 

This report attempts to determine the limits of the synthetic ratio method for 

estimating the population in school districts, and it may prove useful to determine 

whether the method produces estimates that differ in accuracy by types of school 

districts. Of the 13,876 school districts included in statistics for the estimated school-age 

populations, 17.3 percent were Elementary School Districts (ESDs), 3.4 percent were 

Secondary School Districts (SSDs), and 79.2 percent were Unified School Districts 

(USDs, see Table 8). The distribution was similar for the 14,256 school districts included 

in the statistics for the estimates of the total population: 18.8 percent were ESDs, 3.4 

percent were SSDs, and 77.7 percent were USDs (see Table 9). 

There were also five areas outside of school districts for which the school-age 

population size was large enough (30 people or more) to be included in the evaluation 

statistics discussed above. For the estimates of the total population, there were ten areas 

outside of school districts that met the minimum size criteria and were included in the 

analyses presented in this report. However, when MALPEs and MAPEs were calculated 

separately by school district type, the interpretation is limited for these areas outside 

school districts because only five or ten observations were used. For example, the 

school-age population was underestimated by 10.9 percent (MALPE) and the total 

population for areas outside school districts was overestimated by 10.1 percent. The 

unweighted MAPEs had even more extreme average errors of 30.0 percent for the schoolage population and 35.9 percent for the total population. As these errors for the areas 

outside of school districts were relatively large, a series of MALPEs and MAPEs (not 

shown) were also calculated for the school district characteristics described above with 

the areas outside of school districts excluded. The differences between the MALPEs and 

MAPEs presented in this paper and for the subset with the areas outside school districts 

excluded were negligible for all the evaluation characteristics. 

The MALPEs in Table 8 show that the school-age population was overestimated 

for ESDs by 1.5 percent, underestimated by 16.5 percent for SSDs, and underestimated 

by 4.5 percent for USDs. The differences in mean errors were much smaller for the total 

20
 
population which was overestimated by 3.2 percent for ESDs and underestimated for 

SSDs and USDs by 1.2 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively. 

The MAPE for the estimates of the school-age populations were almost 50 

percent higher for the ESDs and SSDs than for the USDs (see Figure 11). These 

differences remained after weighting by the school-age population. In contrast, the 

MAPE for the ESDs for the total population estimates was about two times higher (14.6 

percent) than those for the SSDs (7.2 percent) and the USDs (7.8 percent) (see Figure 

12). These differences were smaller for weighted MAPEs (9.5 percent for ESDs and 6.5 

percent for both SSDs and USDs), but still show that the estimates were least accurate for 

the Elementary School Districts. 

One reason the errors were higher for the ESDs and SSDs may be that the average 

population in Census 2000 was at least twice as large for USDs as for ESDs and SSDs 

(1,196 for ESDs, 2,206 for SSDs, and 4,406 for USDs). As shown in Sections IV.A. and 

IV.B. above, estimates for school districts with smaller populations tended to be less 

accurate. In addition, the SSD mean errors apply to the smallest number of school 

districts (477 for the school-age population and 491 for the total population), so outliers 

would have greater effects on the errors. The underestimation of the older population of 

children (including 12 to 17 year olds) may be because there was a relatively large 

immigrant population which was underestimated for this age group in the county 

estimates for the 1990s. 

The results also indicate that there may be some differences in the age-to-grade 

distributions used to assign relevant children to overlapping school districts. The 

assignment of relevant children to school districts in the 1990 census starting population 

was based on averages of 1988-1990 CPS data. In the Census 2000 standard used for the 

evaluation, relevant children were assigned to school districts based on Census 2000 

sample data by sex, race, Hispanic origin, and Census Region. It is possible that the ageto-grade distributions may have changed over the ten-year period and introduced 

additional error into the estimates of Elementary and Secondary School Districts that do 

not affect the estimates for children in Unified School Districts. 

Finally, the statistics for the estimates for the total population may be somewhat 

skewed because the errors associated with overlapping school districts may be counted 

21
 
more than once in the computation of the MAPEs and MALPEs. However, there is little 

evidence of bias created by including overlapping school districts in the statistics more 

than once. Tables 11 and 12 show MAPEs for a subset of school districts that includes 

only USDs and school districts with boundaries that were not coterminous with county 

boundaries. The MAPEs demonstrate similar patterns of errors by school district 

characteristics with the largest errors for the smallest school districts and for those with 

the largest percent changes from 1990 to 2000. 

F. Errors for School Districts with Total Populations of 20,000 or More 

One of the major conclusions supported by the findings presented above and in 

prior work (Miller 2001) is that the synthetic ratio method performs relatively well for 

larger school districts. In order to further test this finding, a set of statistics was 

calculated only for the school districts with total populations of 20,000 or more. Table 13 

shows some substantial difference between the MAPEs by school district characteristics. 

For example, the MAPE for the school-age population estimate for school districts with 

more than a 10 percent decrease in the total population from 1990 to 2000 was 20.4 

percent for all school districts compared with 12.3 percent for the subset of larger school 

districts. Large differences also occurred for the New England, West North Central, 

West South Central, Mountain, and Pacific Divisions (which contain many of the smaller 

school districts) and Elementary School Districts. The errors were smaller with only the 

larger school districts included for every category except for those with population 

declines of 5 percent to 10 percent. The ranges of errors across characteristics were 

smaller when only the school districts with populations of 20,000 or more were included 

in the MAPEs, supporting the conclusion that the size of the population influences the 

size of the errors for all other school district characteristics. 

G. Errors for School Districts that Were Not Coterminous with County Boundaries 

Where school district boundaries are identical to county boundaries, the errors for 

the school district population estimates are due entirely to the errors in the county 

22
 
population estimates by methodological design. To determine if including school 

districts with boundaries that were coterminous with county boundaries substantially 

reduced the mean errors for the school district estimates, MAPEs were also calculated 

with these school districts excluded. All the school districts in Florida, Nevada, 

Maryland, and West Virginia were coterminous with county boundaries, and Hawaii and 

the District of Columbia contained single school districts. 

Table 14 shows the differences between MAPEs for the two sets of school 

districts for the states with the largest differences. While most of the errors increased 

when coterminous school districts were excluded, the MAPEs for the school-age 

population for Louisiana and Virginia increased slightly because only a few school 

districts were included in the analyses for those two states. There were slight increases in 

the MAPEs for the school-age and total population by size, percent population change, 

and school district type when the school districts with boundaries identical to county 

boundaries were excluded (see Tables 15 and 16). The largest differences were for the 

largest school district size categories and for the largest percent changes, whether 

population growth or decline. Not surprisingly, the largest changes were for the 

categories for which the most school districts were excluded as having boundaries 

coterminous with county boundaries. 

23
 
V. Conclusion 

This paper presents school district population estimates created by the synthetic 

ratio method using 1990 census data and April 1, 2000 county estimates. The estimates 

of the school-age and total populations in school districts were compared to the Census 

2000 school district populations as enumerated to evaluate the accuracy of the estimates. 

The results show that, nationwide, most of the differences between the school district 

estimates and Census 2000 can be attributed to the synthetic ratio method rather than the 

county-level population estimates. The largest mean errors were for school districts with 

total populations under 5,000, school districts with the highest rates of growth and 

decline, school districts in the Pacific and Mountain Divisions (containing states with the 

largest population increases in the 1990s), and Elementary School Districts. 

These findings suggest that the synthetic ratio method may produce sufficiently 

accurate school district population estimates for larger school districts and counties with 

relatively moderate population changes. Future research should focus on smaller districts 

and rapidly changing areas. The additional complexity added by the assignment of 

relevant children to overlapping school districts can be expected to introduce additional 

inaccuracies into the estimates of the school-age population. Special treatment of 

overlapping school districts, particularly Elementary School Districts, may also be 

required to improve the accuracy of the estimates. 

24
 
Appendix A: Identifying Overlapping School Districts 

When assigning relevant children to school districts in the 1990 census data, 

SAIPE staff created a variable to indicate whether a county contained overlapping school 

districts. If a county contained school districts that shared geography and the populations 

within that geography, the school district populations do not sum to equal the county 

populations. Knowing when school district populations should sum to match county and 

state totals is useful for checking the accuracy of the data files as they are manipulated in 

the production of the estimates and for allocating rounding error. 

When population estimates for one level of geography (i.e., school district pieces) 

are intended to sum exactly to estimates of a higher level of geography (i.e., counties), it 

is conventional in the Population Estimates Branch to allocate (add or subtract) the 

rounding error to the area with the largest population in order for the change to have the 

least impact on the estimated population distribution. When the sums of school district 

total populations include people who were counted more than once because school 

districts contained overlapping geography, it was impossible to accurately calculate 

rounding error. For counties that included these populations, the allocation procedure 

could not be applied to the school estimates discussed in this report. 

The flag created by SAIPE staff (referred to as the “original flag” in this report) 

indicated that a county contained overlapping school districts if “relevant children” were 

assigned to overlapping school districts in the 1990 census data tabulated with 1999-2000 

boundaries. When there were overlapping school district pieces in a county, but no actual 

school-age children enumerated in the 1990 census for those pieces, this flag did not 

accurately identify the county as containing overlapping school districts. Consequently, a 

second flag (referred to as the “alternative flag” in this report) was created by comparing 

the sums of the total population for each school district piece in a county to the 

independent county totals from the 1990 census. If the sum of the total population in the 

school district pieces was greater than the county total population, there were people 

counted in more than one school district and the county was identified as containing 

overlapping school districts. Otherwise, the sums of the total population in school district 

pieces equaled the independent county total population and the county did not contain 

any overlapping school districts. This approach did not depend on the presence of 

25
 
school-age children but rather on the presence of people of any age, which was a critical 

difference for the very small school district pieces for which the original flag was 

inaccurate. 

The school district population estimates were calculated using both flags and, 

though the alternative appeared more accurate, the differences were negligible. The flags 

were the same for all but 10 counties (0.3 percent of 3,141) in six states (Hawaii, Illinois, 

Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas). The flags generated population 

estimates that were almost identical to each other (no more than 0.10 percent different). 

Only the results using the alternative flag are discussed in this report. 

26
 
 

 

Appendix B: Cohort-Component and Ratio Methods for Calculating April 1, 2000 

County Estimates 

Preliminary school district estimates were calculated using two sets of April 1, 

2000 county estimates that included the age detail needed to produce the school-age 

population estimates. The county estimates were based on either a cohort-component 

method or a ratio method and were produced by the Administrative Records and 

Methodology Branch (ARMR). The cohort-component method started with the 1990 

census county population and used administrative records to add births, subtract deaths, 

and calculated net migration for each county. The ratio method proportionally applied 

changes in the county populations since the 1990 census while controlling to the state 

population estimates by age, sex, race, and Hispanic origin (Sink and Lollock 2002). 

Both sets of estimates were constrained to equal independently produced total 

populations by counties. Both sets of estimates were also constrained to contain the same 

number of people by age, sex, race, and Hispanic origin for each state. The only way the 

two sets of county estimates differed that was relevant to this evaluation was by the 

number of school-age (5 to 17 years) children in each county. 

The ratio-based method produced larger average proportions of school-age 

children in every state than the cohort-component method, 19.5 percent versus 18.3 

percent for the nation. There were also differences in the age distributions within the 5 to 

17 year age group. On average, the county estimates from the ratio method had higher 

proportions of 5-to-10-year olds than the county estimates from the cohort-component 

method4

. As a result, the county estimates created with the ratio method estimated higher 

average numbers of school-age children in school districts than the cohort-component 

estimates. The ratio-based county estimates also overestimated the school-age population 

in school districts for many states while the county estimates created with the cohortcomponent method on average underestimated the school-age population for all but two 

4

 The total population and total number of people by age in each state were constrained to be equal across 

both sets of county estimates and, consequently, to have higher proportions of children on average by 

county, the ratio method must have distributed sufficiently higher proportions of children to a relatively 

higher number of counties than the cohort-component method. 

27
 
states. This was due to differences in the methodology that were most evident in the 

states with higher population growth, such as California, Colorado, Florida, and Utah. 

For the nation, the cohort-component county estimates underestimated the April 

1, 2000 school-age population in school districts by 3.8 percent and the ratio-based 

county estimates overestimated the school-age population by 1.0 percent. The MAPEs 

for the cohort-component- and ratio-based school district estimates of the school-age 

population, however, were almost identical. For most states, the differences for the 

cohort-component- and ratio-based estimates as measured by the MAPEs were relatively 

small. 

Though the MALPE findings suggest that the ratio-based county estimates may 

yield better school district estimates of the school-age population compared with the 

cohort-component county estimates, the MAPEs do not show such clear results. Only the 

results using the April 1, 2000 county estimates produced using the cohort-component 

method were discussed in this report because this is the only method for producing 

demographic details for county estimates planned for post-Census 2000 estimates. 

28
 
 

 

Appendix C: Treatment of 1990 Census and Census 2000 School District Files 

The Census 2000 data were tabulated by 2001-2002 school district boundaries. These 

boundaries closely matched the 1999-2000 boundaries used to tabulate the 1990 census 

data and subsequent estimates based on those data. There were some differences in the 

data that required special treatment as follows: 

1) The boundaries for three school districts in Ocean County, New Jersey and two 

school districts in Salt Lake County, Utah were incorrectly tabulated in the Census 2000 

data. These five school districts were excluded from all the analyses described in this 

report. There may be other errors in the tabulations of school district population data, but 

only these five districts were identified at the time this report was produced. 

2) Hawaii operates as only one school district and was broken down into five 

school district pieces that coincided with county boundaries in the 1990 census data. By 

definition, the school district population estimates were identical to the county estimates. 

The April 1, 2000 estimates created for these five school district pieces were collapsed 

into a single district for the entire state for comparisons with the Census 2000 data. This 

limited the ability to evaluate the estimates for Hawaii and all the errors between the 

school district estimates and Census 2000 were really errors in the county estimates. 

3) The 1990 census data included areas outside of school districts tabulated 

separately for each county while the areas outside of school districts in Census 2000 data 

were tabulated only for the state totals. For the evaluation, the 1990 census-based school 

district estimates for areas outside of school districts were summed by states in order to 

have comparable figures. These areas contain relatively small populations, 70,037 people 

nationwide in 1990 (88.1 percent of those in Arizona) and 106,351 people in 2000 (78.7 

percent of those in Arizona and 11.4 percent in New York). These areas in Arizona and 

New York were not covered by school districts for reasons unique to those areas. 

4) The total populations in school districts were used as enumerated from the 

Census 2000 long-form data5 and the school-age populations were tabulated from the 

Census 2000 sample data (approximately 1 in 6 sample). Sample data were used for the 

5

 Census 2000 population data include modifications as documented in the Count Question Resolution 

program, updates from the Boundary and Annexation Survey, and geographic program revisions. 

29
 
assignment of relevant children to school districts because they included information on 

both age and grade. The use of Census 2000 sample data meant that there were some 

school districts for which the school-age populations were too small to be selected in the 

households sampled. When the total and school-age populations were matched by school 

districts, there were 38 school districts not listed in the file of school-age children 

because the districts did not contain any sample data for the population ages 5 to 17. 

Most of these school districts had less than 60 people of any age enumerated in Census 

2000 and only one school district had more than 100 people enumerated. This confirms 

that there were probably households with school-age children present in the 38 

unmatched school districts but not in large enough numbers to be selected in the sample. 

Though important to note, the use of sample data does not generally limit this evaluation 

of 1990 census-based school district estimates because school districts must have 

contained at least 30 people (total or school-age) in Census 2000 to be included in the 

calculation of the MAPEs and MALPEs. 

30
 
References 

Blumerman, Lisa M. and Matthew Christenson. 2002. “The Population Estimates of the 

1990s: Close to the Mark?” Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American 

Sociological Association, Chicago, IL. 

Miller, Esther. 2001. “Evaluation of the 1990 School District Level Population 

Estimates Based on the Synthetic Ratio Approach.” U.S. Census Bureau, Population 

Division Working Paper No. 54. 

National Research Council. 2000. Small-Area Estimates of School-Age Children in 

Poverty: Evaluation of Current Methodology. Panel on Estimates of Poverty for 

Small Geographic Areas, Constance F. Citro and Graham Kalton, editors. Committee 

on National Statistics. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. 

Sink, Larry and Lisa Lollock. “An Evaluation of Alternative Methods of Estimating 

Population by Age, Race, and Hispanic Origin at the County Level.” Paper presented 

at the annual meeting of the Southern Demographic Association, October 2002. 

U.S. Census Bureau, Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division, Small Area 

Estimates Branch. 2002. “Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates: 1999 

Overview of School District Estimates.” 

www.census.gov/hhes/www/saipe/schools/sd99over.htmp 

31
 
Figure 1. Unweighted and Weighted Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the A

2000 School District Estimates of the Total and School-Age Populations: Estimates B

April 1, 2000 County Estimates and Census 2000 County Enumeration Data 

Total Population-MAPE Total Population-Weighted MAPE School-Age Population-MAPE School-A

9.1 

6.7 

12.9 

8.6 

5.5 

11.7 

0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 

10.0 12.0 14.0 

Mean Absolute Percent Error 

Based on April 1, 2000 County Estimates Based on Census 2000 County Enumerat
Figure 2. Mean Algebraic Percent Errors (MALPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of t

Population and School-Age Population in School Districts Compared with the Censu

Enumerated Population by School District Size in the 1990 Census

Under 5,000 5,000 - 9,999 10,000 - 19,999 20,000 - 39,999 

School District Size 

2.0 

-1.4 

-2.0 -1.9 

-3.0 

-4.9 

-5.4 

-4.7 

-6.0 -5.0 -4.0 -3.0 -2.0 -1.0 

0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 

Mean Algebraic Percent Error 

Total Population School-Age Population 
Figure 3. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

Age Population in School Districts Compared with Census 2000 Enumerated Popula

School District Size in the 1990 Census

Under 5,000 5,000 - 9,999 10,000 - 19,999 20,000 - 39,999 

School District Size 

16.2 

11.1 

10.2 9.9 

14.0 

11.6 

10.9 

10.4 

0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 

10.0 12.0 14.0 16.0 18.0 

Mean Absolute Percent Error 

Unweighted MAPE Weighted MAPE 
Figure 4. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of th

Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Popula

School District Size in the 1990 Census

Under 5,000 5,000 - 9,999 10,000 - 19,999 20,000 - 39,999 

School District Size 

11.6 

7.3 7.0 6.7 

9.6 

8.0 

7.6 

7.2 

0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 

10.0 12.0 14.0 

Mean Absolute Percent Error 

Unweighted MAPE Weighted MAPE 
Figure 5. Mean Algebraic Percent Errors (MALPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of t

Population and School-Age Population in School Districts Compared with the Censu

Enumerated Population by School District Size in Census 2000

Under 5,000 5,000 - 9,999 10,000 - 19,999 20,000 - 39,999 

School District Size 

3.0 

-1.4 

-2.2 

-3.2 

-2.2 

-4.9 

-5.4 

-6.1 

-7.0 -6.0 -5.0 -4.0 -3.0 -2.0 -1.0 

0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 

Mean Algebraic Percent Error 

Total Population School-Age Population 
Figure 6. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

Age Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Pop

by School District Size in Census 2000 

Under 5,000 5,000 - 9,999 10,000 - 19,999 20,000 - 39,999 

School District Size 

16.2 

10.9 

10.2 

10.8 

13.3 

10.6 

10.1 

10.7 

0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 

10.0 12.0 14.0 16.0 18.0 

Mean Absolute Percent Error 

Unweighted MAPE Weighted MAPE 
Figure 7. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of th

Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Popula

School District Size in Census 2000

Under 5,000 5,000 - 9,999 10,000 - 19,999 20,000 - 39,999 

School District Size 

11.5 

7.3 7.0 7.5 

8.6 

7.2 7.0 7.5 

0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 

10.0 12.0 14.0 

Mean Absolute Percent Error 

Unweighted MAPE Weighted MAPE 
Figure 8. Mean Algebraic Percent Errors (MALPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the Total and School-Age Populatio

Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population by Ten-Year Percent Change in School District Po

25.7 

7.7 

4.5 

2.1 

-0.5 

18.0 

3.1 

0.9 

-1.5 

-3.7 

-15.0 -10.0 

-5.0 

0.0 5.0 

10.0 15.0 20.0 25.0 30.0 

Mean Algebraic Percent Error 

Decrease of more 

than 10.0% 

Decrease of 5.1% to 

10.0% 

Decrease of 5.0% or 

less 

No Change or 

Increase of less than 

5.0% 

Increase of 5.0% to 

9.9% 

Percent Change, 1990 to 2000 

Total Population School-Age Population 
20.4 

7.8 8.0 8.1 8.6 

12.9 

8.4 7.9 8.6 7.3 

0.0 5.0 

10.0 15.0 20.0 25.0 

Mean Absolute Percent Error 

Figure 9. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

Age Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Pop

by Ten-Year Percent Change in the School District School-Age Population

Decrease of more Decrease of 5.1% to Decrease of 5.0% or No Change or Increase of 5.0% to 

than 10.0% 10.0% less Increase of less than 9.9% 

5.0% 

Percent Change 

Unweighted MAPE Weighted MAPE 
Figure 10. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of t

Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Popula

Ten-Year Percent Change in the School District Total Population

Decrease of more Decrease of 5.1% to Decrease of 5.0% or No Change or Increase of 5.0% to 

than 10.0% 10.0% less Increase of less than 9.9% 

5.0% 

Percent Change 

26.1 

8.5 

5.8 

4.6 4.8 

12.6 

7.7 

5.6 

4.2 4.4 

0.0 5.0 

10.0 15.0 20.0 25.0 30.0 

Mean Absolute Percent Error 

Unweighted MAPE Weighted MAPE 
Mean Absolute Percent Error 

Figure 11. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of th

Age Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Pop

by School District Type 

25.0 

19.6 20.0 18.8 

16.1 

15.0 13.8 

11.3 

10.0 

5.0 0.0

Elementary School District Secondary School District Unified S

School District Type 

Unweighted MAPE Weighted MAPE 
Figure 12. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of t

Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Popula

School District Type

Elementary School District Secondary School District Unified S

School District Type 

14.6 

7.2 

7.8 

9.5 

6.5 

0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 

10.0 12.0 14.0 16.0 

Mean Absolute Percent Error 

Unweighted MAPE Weighted MAPE 
(leading dot indicates sub-part)

 

 

. 

. 

.

. 

Footnotes:

Table 1. Number of School Districts Included and Excluded from Analyses: 2000 

School District Type 

Number of School Districts 

Total Population 

School-Age 

Population 

Total 14,310 14,310 

Included 

Excluded* 

Boundary Error in Census 2000 Data 

Extreme Outliers 

Associated with Military Base Closures 

Census 2000 Population Less than 30 (including zero) 

14,256 

54 

5 

8 

4 

40 

13,876 

434 

5 

3 

4 

425 

*The figures contain three school districts that qualified twice for exclusion. 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division 

Internet Release Date: June 3, 2004 

44
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Footnotes:

Table 2. Mean Algebraic Percent Errors (MALPE) and Standard Deviations of Errors for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the 

School-Age Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population by State 

State 

Number of School 

Districts Included in 

MALPE* MALPE Standard Deviation 

Total 13,876 -3.8 18.4 

Alabama 130 -6.4 11.9 

Alaska 50 -2.9 18.8 

Arizona 207 -0.8 37.9 

Arkansas 310 -5.3 13.9 

California 956 -1.0 29.3 

Colorado 176 -8.4 16.7 

Connecticut 166 -4.4 11.9 

Delaware 16 -10.0 13.2 

District of Columbia 1 -13.5 (X) 

Florida 67 -4.6 7.1 

Georgia 183 -6.1 12.2 

Hawaii 1 -4.6 (X) 

Idaho 111 -4.1 13.9 

Illinois 896 -2.7 18.6 

Indiana 295 -4.5 11.7 

Iowa 375 -3.1 12.3 

Kansas 304 -7.0 13.7 

Kentucky 178 -2.4 11.6 

Louisiana 66 -4.6 6.2 

Maine 247 -5.4 18.0 

Maryland 24 -6.6 6.1 

Massachusetts 300 -3.1 16.2 

Michigan 545 -2.7 14.3 

Minnesota 347 -1.4 13.5 

Mississippi 149 -3.5 9.9 

Missouri 522 -1.8 16.5 

Montana 358 -5.0 29.9 

Nebraska 448 -2.2 26.9 

Nevada 17 -2.4 9.5 

New Hampshire 174 -5.1 17.5 

New Jersey 568 -1.8 18.0 

New Mexico 89 -0.9 23.5 

New York 686 -8.3 10.9 

North Carolina 120 0.2 10.1 

North Dakota 222 -0.8 23.5 

Ohio 610 -3.7 12.6 

Oklahoma 544 -3.5 18.1 

Oregon 183 -0.3 16.6 

Pennsylvania 501 -3.2 9.2 

Rhode Island 36 0.3 11.4 

South Carolina 88 -8.4 11.2 

South Dakota 175 -4.1 14.8 

Tennessee 155 -5.8 13.1 

Texas 1,035 -7.3 20.3 

Utah 38 -7.8 14.9 

Vermont 249 -5.3 18.3 

Virginia 137 -6.2 13.2 

Washington 292 -4.4 19.9 

West Virginia 55 -1.4 5.4 

Wisconsin 425 -3.1 12.9 

Wyoming 49 -5.1 12.1 

*School districts with known boundary errors, those affected by military base closures, extreme outliers, and with less than 30 school-age children 

enumerated in Census 2000 are excluded from the calculations of the percent errors. 

(X) Not Applicable. 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division 

Internet Release Date: June 3, 2004 

45
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Footnotes:

Table 3. Unweighted and Weighted Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) and Standard Deviations of Errors for the April 1, 2000 

Estimates of the School-Age Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population by State 

State 

Number of School 

Districts Included in 

MAPE* MAPE 

Standard 

Deviation 

Number of School 

Districts Included in 

Weighted MAPE* Weighted MAPE 

Standard 

Deviation 

Total 13,876 12.9 13.7 13,876 9.3 549.4 

Alabama 130 10.9 8.0 130 10.0 651.6 

Alaska 50 14.6 12.1 51 6.4 310.1 

Arizona 207 25.0 28.5 221 17.4 947.9 

Arkansas 310 11.5 9.5 310 9.9 312.2 

California 956 18.9 22.4 988 10.6 913.4 

Colorado 176 14.4 11.8 176 11.5 564.4 

Connecticut 166 9.5 8.4 166 7.7 381.1 

Delaware 16 11.7 11.7 16 10.1 959.0 

District of Columbia 1 13.5 (X) 1 13.5 (X) 

Florida 67 6.6 5.2 67 4.0 647.7 

Georgia 183 10.4 8.8 184 9.7 677.1 

Hawaii 1 4.6 (X) 1 4.6 (X) 

Idaho 111 10.8 9.6 113 8.9 319.6 

Illinois 896 13.4 13.2 897 11.2 542.5 

Indiana 295 9.4 8.3 295 10.1 584.0 

Iowa 375 9.6 8.3 375 8.3 288.3 

Kansas 304 12.0 9.7 305 13.8 451.2 

Kentucky 178 9.0 7.7 179 6.5 398.9 

Louisiana 66 5.9 4.9 66 4.6 473.2 

Maine 247 13.8 12.7 296 9.3 254.3 

Maryland 24 7.7 4.7 24 7.2 888.7 

Massachusetts 300 11.0 12.3 303 8.6 484.3 

Michigan 545 10.9 9.7 555 9.9 453.0 

Minnesota 347 10.2 8.9 348 9.4 422.3 

Mississippi 149 8.3 6.4 149 8.3 426.6 

Missouri 522 12.3 11.1 522 10.4 386.0 

Montana 358 22.2 20.6 455 13.7 261.1 

Nebraska 448 17.7 20.3 590 8.8 257.5 

Nevada 17 7.5 6.1 17 3.0 529.9 

New Hampshire 174 12.7 13.1 175 8.5 385.1 

New Jersey 568 13.2 12.3 572 10.7 476.9 

New Mexico 89 16.0 17.2 89 7.3 579.0 

New York 686 10.8 8.3 688 6.1 467.6 

North Carolina 120 6.4 7.8 121 5.5 620.5 

North Dakota 222 17.4 15.8 230 10.1 225.5 

Ohio 610 9.7 8.8 613 10.1 535.2 

Oklahoma 544 13.2 12.9 545 10.8 282.0 

Oregon 183 11.7 11.8 198 9.9 503.1 

Pennsylvania 501 7.4 6.3 502 7.3 424.4 

Rhode Island 36 8.9 6.9 36 7.1 413.4 

South Carolina 88 11.7 7.6 91 11.8 614.8 

South Dakota 175 11.7 9.9 176 8.4 246.0 

Tennessee 155 10.9 9.3 155 9.0 488.3 

Texas 1,035 15.5 14.9 1,040 12.0 735.7 

Utah 38 14.2 8.9 38 8.6 685.9 

Vermont 249 14.8 11.9 259 11.9 205.8 

Virginia 137 11.5 9.0 137 11.1 674.9 

Washington 292 14.6 14.2 297 9.4 468.7 

West Virginia 55 4.5 3.3 55 4.3 210.0 

Wisconsin 425 9.9 8.8 427 8.1 348.8 

Wyoming 49 10.7 7.5 49 7.9 232.3 

*School districts with known boundary errors, those affected by military base closures, extreme outliers, and with less than 30 school-age children enumerated in Census 2000 

are excluded from the calculations of the percent errors. The number of school districts included in the unweighted and weighted statistics differ due to the criteria for 

excluding school districts with less than 30 school-age children.
 

The values for the standard deviations are relatively large due to weighting by the Census 2000 school-age population.
 

(X) Not Applicable. 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division 

Internet Release Date: June 3, 2004 

46
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Footnotes:

Table 4. Mean Algebraic Percent Errors (MALPE) and Standard Deviations of Errors for the April 

1, 2000 Estimates of the Total Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 

Enumerated Population by State 

State 

Number of School 

Districts Included in 

MALPE* MALPE Standard Deviation 

Total 14,256 0.1 16.3 

Alabama 130 -0.8 10.4 

Alaska 51 -0.8 14.1 

Arizona 219 -2.0 35.6 

Arkansas 310 -2.8 11.4 

California 986 6.7 33.9 

Colorado 176 -5.2 14.3 

Connecticut 166 -4.8 7.7 

Delaware 16 -4.6 13.6 

District of Columbia 1 -8.6 (X) 

Florida 67 -5.2 5.8 

Georgia 183 -2.6 8.3 

Hawaii 1 -2.2 (X) 

Idaho 113 1.1 11.9 

Illinois 896 0.6 13.2 

Indiana 295 0.03 11.1 

Iowa 375 0.01 7.6 

Kansas 304 -0.6 9.5 

Kentucky 178 1.7 9.4 

Louisiana 66 -1.0 3.4 

Maine 289 -2.9 14.4 

Maryland 24 -1.2 2.1 

Massachusetts 302 -3.4 10.9 

Michigan 555 -1.2 11.1 

Minnesota 348 -0.5 9.4 

Mississippi 149 -1.7 8.0 

Missouri 522 0.9 10.7 

Montana 448 3.7 21.3 

Nebraska 585 5.1 18.7 

Nevada 17 -1.1 9.9 

New Hampshire 175 -5.1 11.0 

New Jersey 569 0.4 12.1 

New Mexico 89 0.1 16.9 

New York 688 -1.7 8.5 

North Carolina 120 -2.2 6.8 

North Dakota 230 5.4 13.4 

Ohio 613 -0.8 11.5 

Oklahoma 545 1.5 16.5 

Oregon 197 4.5 19.3 

Pennsylvania 501 -1.3 7.3 

Rhode Island 36 -5.2 5.8 

South Carolina 90 -4.0 11.2 

South Dakota 176 0.5 9.7 

Tennessee 155 0.3 11.5 

Texas 1,040 -1.3 20.9 

Utah 38 -1.5 10.6 

Vermont 259 -4.8 9.7 

Virginia 137 -1.4 5.9 

Washington 297 -0.7 16.1 

West Virginia 55 0.8 3.7 

Wisconsin 425 -1.8 8.2 

Wyoming 49 -0.7 8.3 

*School districts with known boundary errors, those affected by military base closures, extreme outliers, and with less than 30 people 

enumerated in Census 2000 are excluded from the calculations of the prercent errors. 

(X) Not Applicable. 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division 

Internet Release Date: June 3, 2004 

47
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Footnotes:

Table 5. Unweighted and Weighted Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) and Standard Deviations of Errors for the April 1, 2000 

Estimates of the Total Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population by State 

State 

Number of School 

Districts Included in 

MAPE* MAPE 

Standard 

Deviation 

Number of School 

Districts Included in 

Weighted MAPE* Weighted MAPE 

Standard 

Deviation 

Total 14,256 9.1 13.6 14,256 6.7 1068.7 

Alabama 130 7.1 7.6 130 7.1 1294.9 

Alaska 51 9.8 10.1 51 2.2 459.0 

Arizona 219 23.4 26.8 219 14.8 2356.2 

Arkansas 310 8.0 8.6 310 6.8 639.1 

California 986 16.8 30.2 986 6.9 1815.8 

Colorado 176 11.1 10.4 176 8.3 1135.7 

Connecticut 166 7.2 5.5 166 6.1 653.2 

Delaware 16 9.1 10.9 16 9.9 1860.0 

District of Columbia 1 8.6 (X) 1 8.6 (X) 

Florida 67 5.7 5.3 67 4.8 1528.3 

Georgia 183 6.1 6.1 183 6.3 1208.9 

Hawaii 1 2.2 (X) 1 2.2 (X) 

Idaho 113 7.2 9.5 113 7.3 781.2 

Illinois 896 8.5 10.1 896 7.0 1245.8 

Indiana 295 6.9 8.7 295 6.8 1156.3 

Iowa 375 5.0 5.7 375 5.2 579.4 

Kansas 304 6.1 7.2 304 10.0 985.5 

Kentucky 178 5.8 7.6 178 4.7 897.2 

Louisiana 66 2.7 2.2 66 2.7 455.7 

Maine 289 11.1 9.6 289 7.4 405.4 

Maryland 24 1.9 1.5 24 2.0 545.7 

Massachusetts 302 7.2 8.9 302 5.5 887.0 

Michigan 555 8.1 7.7 555 8.4 814.4 

Minnesota 348 6.2 7.1 348 6.2 756.9 

Mississippi 149 6.0 5.5 149 6.6 811.0 

Missouri 522 7.5 7.7 522 7.3 757.7 

Montana 448 13.5 16.9 448 4.8 443.9 

Nebraska 585 11.9 15.4 585 5.6 384.6 

Nevada 17 8.2 5.3 17 8.4 871.1 

New Hampshire 175 8.4 8.8 175 6.2 624.6 

New Jersey 569 8.6 8.5 569 7.2 862.4 

New Mexico 89 11.5 12.3 89 6.9 873.3 

New York 688 6.1 6.1 688 5.8 662.9 

North Carolina 120 4.9 5.2 120 5.4 1053.6 

North Dakota 230 10.3 10.2 230 6.2 459.6 

Ohio 613 7.4 8.8 613 8.0 1055.9 

Oklahoma 545 9.1 13.9 545 7.4 615.5 

Oregon 197 11.2 16.4 197 5.8 808.2 

Pennsylvania 501 5.4 5.0 501 5.7 748.7 

Rhode Island 36 6.4 4.4 36 5.9 735.8 

South Carolina 90 7.8 8.9 90 6.5 1192.3 

South Dakota 176 6.5 7.2 176 5.7 429.8 

Tennessee 155 6.4 9.5 155 6.0 1339.0 

Texas 1,040 11.5 17.4 1,040 9.6 1445.7 

Utah 38 7.0 8.1 38 8.2 1348.3 

Vermont 259 8.1 7.2 259 6.2 314.6 

Virginia 137 4.1 4.4 137 3.5 670.7 

Washington 297 11.1 11.7 297 7.6 936.8 

West Virginia 55 2.9 2.4 55 2.4 411.0 

Wisconsin 425 6.0 5.8 425 5.1 659.6 

Wyoming 49 6.5 5.2 49 5.2 479.4 

*School districts with known boundary errors, those affected by military base closures, extreme outliers, and with less than 30 people enumerated in Census 2000 are 

excluded from the calculations of the percent errors.
 

The values for the standard deviations are relatively large due to weighting by the Census 2000 total population.
 

(X) Not Applicable. 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division 

Internet Release Date: June 3, 2004 

48
Footnotes:

Table 6. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the Total Population in Two Sets of School 

Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population by State 

State 

All School Districts* 

School Districts with Additional 

Exclusions** 

Differences between Sets of School 

Districts 

Number of Districts 

Included in MAPE MAPE 

Number of Districts 

Included in MAPE MAPE 

Number of Districts 

Included in MAPE MAPE 

Total 13,876 12.9 10,059 11.6 3,817 1.3 

Alabama 130 10.9 105 11.5 25 -0.6 

Alaska 50 14.6 34 16.6 16 -2.1 

Arizona 207 25.0 125 24.7 82 0.3 

Arkansas 310 11.5 310 11.5 0 0.0 

California 956 18.9 320 13.0 636 5.8 

Colorado 176 14.4 166 14.6 10 -0.1 

Connecticut 166 9.5 112 8.3 54 1.2 

Delaware 16 11.7 16 11.7 0 0.0 

District of Columbia 1 13.5 0 (X) (X) (X) 

Florida 67 6.6 0 (X) (X) (X) 

Georgia 183 10.4 52 13.9 131 -3.6 

Hawaii 1 4.6 1 4.6 0 0.0 

Idaho 111 10.8 104 10.9 7 0.0 

Illinois 896 13.4 406 11.2 490 2.2 

Indiana 295 9.4 278 9.5 17 -0.1 

Iowa 375 9.6 375 9.6 0 0.0 

Kansas 304 12.0 299 12.1 5 -0.1 

Kentucky 178 9.0 101 10.1 77 -1.1 

Louisiana 66 5.9 4 4.9 62 1.0 

Maine 247 13.8 214 13.4 33 0.3 

Maryland 24 7.7 0 (X) (X) (X) 

Massachusetts 300 11.0 207 9.1 93 1.9 

Michigan 545 10.9 523 10.3 22 0.6 

Minnesota 347 10.2 345 10.2 2 0.0 

Mississippi 149 8.3 115 8.7 34 -0.5 

Missouri 522 12.3 447 11.0 75 1.2 

Montana 358 22.2 50 20.2 308 2.0 

Nebraska 448 17.7 263 12.0 185 5.8 

Nevada 17 7.5 0 (X) (X) (X) 

New Hampshire 174 12.7 76 9.8 98 2.8 

New Jersey 568 13.2 230 10.4 338 2.8 

New Mexico 89 16.0 85 16.1 4 -0.1 

New York 686 10.8 672 10.8 14 0.1 

North Carolina 120 6.4 39 10.1 81 -3.7 

North Dakota 222 17.4 185 16.4 37 1.0 

Ohio 610 9.7 610 9.7 0 0.0 

Oklahoma 544 13.2 431 11.9 113 1.3 

Oregon 183 11.7 175 11.7 8 0.0 

Pennsylvania 501 7.4 497 7.4 4 0.0 

Rhode Island 36 8.9 30 7.8 6 1.1 

South Carolina 88 11.7 62 12.6 26 -0.9 

South Dakota 175 11.7 170 11.8 5 -0.1 

Tennessee 155 10.9 58 9.8 97 1.0 

Texas 1,035 15.5 996 15.6 39 -0.1 

Utah 38 14.2 16 17.2 22 -3.0 

Vermont 249 14.8 52 12.8 197 2.0 

Virginia 137 11.5 10 10.6 127 0.8 

Washington 292 14.6 286 14.2 6 0.4 

West Virginia 55 4.5 0 (X) (X) (X) 

Wisconsin 425 9.9 366 8.5 59 1.4 

Wyoming 49 10.7 41 11.1 8 -0.3 

*School districts with known boundary errors, those affected by military base closures, extreme outliers, and with less than 30 school-age children enumberated in Census 2000 

are excluded from the calculations of the percent errors. 

**In addition to the above exclusions, school districts with boundaries that are identical to county boundaries, Elementary and Secondary School Districts are also excluded from 

the calculations of the MAPEs. 

(X) Not Applicable. 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division 

Internet Release Date: June 3, 2004 

49
Footnotes:

Table 7. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the Total Population in Two Sets of School 

Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population by State 

State 

All School Districts* 

School Districts with Additional 

Exclusions** 

Differences between Sets of School 

Districts 

Number of Districts 

Included in MAPE MAPE 

Number of Districts 

Included in MAPE MAPE 

Number of Districts 

Included in MAPE MAPE 

Total 14,256 9.1 10,141 8.1 4,115 0.9 

Alabama 130 7.1 105 8.2 25 -1.1 

Alaska 51 9.8 35 11.9 16 -2.1 

Arizona 219 23.4 137 24.9 82 -1.4 

Arkansas 310 8.0 310 8.0 0 0.0 

California 986 16.8 320 11.2 666 5.6 

Colorado 176 11.1 166 11.4 10 -0.3 

Connecticut 166 7.2 112 6.8 54 0.5 

Delaware 16 9.1 16 9.1 0 0.0 

District of Columbia 1 8.6 0 (X) (X) (X) 

Florida 67 5.7 0 (X) (X) (X) 

Georgia 183 6.1 52 8.9 131 -2.8 

Hawaii 1 2.2 1 2.2 0 0.0 

Idaho 113 7.2 106 7.4 7 -0.2 

Illinois 896 8.5 406 7.4 490 1.1 

Indiana 295 6.9 278 7.1 17 -0.2 

Iowa 375 5.0 375 5.0 0 0.0 

Kansas 304 6.1 299 6.1 5 0.0 

Kentucky 178 5.8 101 7.9 77 -2.1 

Louisiana 66 2.7 4 6.1 62 -3.4 

Maine 289 11.1 256 11.3 33 -0.3 

Maryland 24 1.9 0 (X) (X) (X) 

Massachusetts 302 7.2 207 6.5 95 0.7 

Michigan 555 8.1 523 7.6 32 0.5 

Minnesota 348 6.2 345 6.0 3 0.2 

Mississippi 149 6.0 115 6.6 34 -0.6 

Missouri 522 7.5 447 7.3 75 0.2 

Montana 448 13.5 51 11.3 397 2.2 

Nebraska 585 11.9 263 5.8 322 6.1 

Nevada 17 8.2 0 (X) (X) (X) 

New Hampshire 175 8.4 76 6.6 99 1.8 

New Jersey 569 8.6 231 7.4 338 1.2 

New Mexico 89 11.5 85 11.8 4 -0.2 

New York 688 6.1 674 6.2 14 -0.1 

North Carolina 120 4.9 39 7.8 81 -2.9 

North Dakota 230 10.3 185 9.3 45 1.0 

Ohio 613 7.4 612 7.2 1 0.2 

Oklahoma 545 9.1 431 7.8 114 1.3 

Oregon 197 11.2 182 10.3 15 0.8 

Pennsylvania 501 5.4 497 5.4 4 0.0 

Rhode Island 36 6.4 30 5.7 6 0.7 

South Carolina 90 7.8 62 8.1 28 -0.4 

South Dakota 176 6.5 171 6.5 5 0.0 

Tennessee 155 6.4 58 7.6 97 -1.2 

Texas 1,040 11.5 999 11.6 41 -0.1 

Utah 38 7.0 16 10.5 22 -3.5 

Vermont 259 8.1 56 8.4 203 -0.2 

Virginia 137 4.1 10 8.6 127 -4.5 

Washington 297 11.1 290 10.4 7 0.6 

West Virginia 55 2.9 0 (X) (X) (X) 

Wisconsin 425 6.0 366 5.6 59 0.5 

Wyoming 49 6.5 41 6.7 8 -0.2 

*School districts with known boundary errors, those affected by military base closures, extreme outliers, and with less than 30 school-age children enumberated in Census 2000 

are excluded from the calculations of the percent errors. 

**In addition to the above exclusions, school districts with boundaries that are identical to county boundaries, Elementary and Secondary School Districts are also excluded from 

the calculations of the MAPEs. 

(X) Not Applicable. 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division 

Internet Release Date: June 3, 2004 

50
(leading dot indicates sub-part)

 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

Footnotes:

Table 8. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) and Mean Algebraic Percent Errors (MALPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates 

of the School-Age Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population by School District 

Characteristics 

School District Population 

Unweighted Number of School Districts 

Weighted by the School-Age 

Population 

Number of 

Districts 

Percent of 

Districts MAPE MALPE 

Number of 

Districts 

(thousands) 

Percent of 

Population MAPE 

School-Age Children 

School District Population, 1990 

13,876 100.0% 12.9 -3.8 52,961 100.0% 9.3 

Under 5,000 6,163 44.4% 16.2 -3.0 2,784 5.3% 14.0 

5,000 - 9,999 2,588 18.7% 11.1 -4.9 3,917 7.4% 11.6 

10,000 - 19,999 2,373 17.1% 10.2 -5.4 6,961 13.1% 10.9 

20,000 - 39,999 1,464 10.6% 9.9 -4.7 8,111 15.3% 10.4 

40,000 or more 

School District Population, 2000 

1,288 9.3% 9.2 -1.9 31,189 58.9% 7.9 

Under 5,000 5,830 42.0% 16.2 -2.2 2,399 4.5% 13.3 

5,000 - 9,999 2,550 18.4% 10.9 -4.9 3,446 6.5% 10.6 

10,000 - 19,999 2,376 17.1% 10.2 -5.4 6,176 11.7% 10.1 

20,000 - 39,999 1,636 11.8% 10.8 -6.1 8,055 15.2% 10.7 

40,000 or more 

Percent Population Change, 1990-2000* 

1,484 10.7% 10.0 -3.5 32,885 62.1% 8.3 

Decrease of more than 10.0% 1,922 13.9% 20.4 18.0 1,720 3.2% 12.9 

Decrease of 5.0% to 10.0% 1,085 7.8% 7.8 3.1 2,018 3.8% 8.4 

Decrease of 0.1% to 5.0% 1,405 10.1% 8.0 0.9 3,999 7.6% 7.9 

Increase of 0 to 4.9% 1,516 10.9% 8.1 -1.5 4,828 9.1% 8.6 

Increase of 5.0% to 9.9% 1,536 11.1% 8.6 -3.7 6,016 11.4% 7.3 

Increase of 10% or more 

Census Division 

6,363 45.9% 14.5 -12.9 34,379 64.9% 9.7 

East North Central 2,771 20.0% 11.1 -3.2 8,598 16.2% 10.1 

East South Central 612 4.4% 9.7 -4.4 3,151 5.9% 8.6 

Middle Atlantic 1,755 12.6% 10.6 -4.7 7,140 13.5% 7.4 

Mountain 1,045 7.5% 18.6 -4.4 3,475 6.6% 11.3 

New England 1,172 8.4% 12.4 -4.4 2,480 4.7% 8.5 

Pacific 1,482 10.7% 17.0 -1.7 8,865 16.7% 10.2 

South Atlantic 691 5.0% 9.2 -4.9 9,244 17.5% 7.3 

West North Central 2,393 17.2% 13.0 -2.8 3,688 7.0% 10.1 

West South Central 

School District Type 

1,955 14.1% 13.9 -5.8 6,321 11.9% 10.7 

Area Outside of School Districts 5 0.04% 30.0 -10.9 6 0.01% 40.2 

Elementary School District 2,405 17.3% 18.8 1.5 3,201 6.0% 13.8 

Secondary School District 477 3.4% 19.6 -16.5 1,083 2.0% 16.1 

Unified School District 10,989 79.2% 11.3 -4.5 48,671 91.9% 8.8 

*Number of school districts may not sum to total due to additional missing values (1990 census population of zero). 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division 

Internet Release Date: June 3, 2004 

51
(leading dot indicates sub-part)

 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

Footnotes:

Table 9. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) and Mean Algebraic Percent Errors (MALPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates 

of the Total Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population by School District 

Characteristics 

School District Population 

Unweighted Number of School Districts Weighted by the Total Population 

Number of 

Districts 

Percent of 

Districts MAPE MALPE 

Number of 

Districts** 

(thousands) 

Percent of 

Population MAPE 

Total Population 

School District Population, 1990 

14,256 100.0% 9.1 0.1 300,417 100.0% 6.7 

Under 5,000 6,543 45.9% 11.6 2.0 14,610 4.9% 9.6 

5,000 - 9,999 2,588 18.2% 7.3 -1.4 20,907 7.0% 8.0 

10,000 - 19,999 2,373 16.6% 7.0 -2.0 38,103 12.7% 7.6 

20,000 - 39,999 1,464 10.3% 6.7 -1.9 46,035 15.3% 7.2 

40,000 or more 

School District Population, 2000 

1,288 9.0% 6.4 -1.2 180,762 60.2% 6.0 

Under 5,000 6,210 43.6% 11.5 3.0 12,623 4.2% 8.6 

5,000 - 9,999 2,550 17.9% 7.3 -1.4 18,424 6.1% 7.2 

10,000 - 19,999 2,376 16.7% 7.0 -2.2 33,913 11.3% 7.0 

20,000 - 39,999 1,636 11.5% 7.5 -3.2 45,539 15.2% 7.5 

40,000 or more 

Percent Population Change, 1990-2000* 

1,484 10.4% 7.0 -2.5 189,918 63.2% 6.3 

Decrease of more than 10.0% 1,091 7.7% 26.1 25.7 5,145 1.7% 12.6 

Decrease of 5.0% to 10.0% 1,055 7.4% 8.5 7.7 12,690 4.2% 7.7 

Decrease of 0.1% to 5.0% 1,799 12.6% 5.8 4.5 25,774 8.6% 5.6 

Increase of 0 to 4.9% 2,404 16.9% 4.6 2.1 42,704 14.2% 4.2 

Increase of 5.0% to 9.9% 2,091 14.7% 4.8 -0.5 61,258 20.4% 4.4 

Increase of 10% or more 

Census Division 

5,814 40.8% 10.3 -8.1 152,846 50.9% 8.2 

East North Central 2,784 19.5% 7.6 -0.5 49,944 16.6% 7.3 

East South Central 612 4.3% 6.3 -0.04 17,244 5.7% 6.1 

Middle Atlantic 1,758 12.3% 6.7 -0.9 41,342 13.8% 6.1 

Mountain 1,149 8.1% 13.7 0.3 20,206 6.7% 10.0 

New England 1,227 8.6% 8.5 -4.1 14,902 5.0% 5.9 

Pacific 1,532 10.7% 14.7 4.7 54,264 18.1% 6.8 

South Atlantic 693 4.9% 5.4 -2.5 51,784 17.2% 4.8 

West North Central 2,540 17.8% 8.0 1.8 19,286 6.4% 6.8 

West South Central 

School District Type 

1,961 13.8% 10.0 -0.7 31,445 10.5% 8.1 

Area Outside of School Districts 10 0.1% 35.9 10.1 94 0.03% 1.3 

Elementary School District 2,684 18.8% 14.6 3.2 21,669 7.2% 9.5 

Secondary School District 491 3.4% 7.2 -1.2 19,664 6.5% 6.5 

Unified School District 11,071 77.7% 7.8 -0.7 258,989 86.2% 6.5 

*Number of school districts may not sum to total due to additional missing values (1990 census population of zero).
 

**The total population exceeds the total population enumerated in Census 2000 due to overlapping school districts.
 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division
 

Internet Release Date: June 3, 2004
 

52
(leading dot indicates sub-part)

 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

Footnotes:

Table 10. Number of School Districts and Distribution of the School-Age Population by the Total 

School District Population: 1990 and 2000 

Population Size 

Number of 

School Districts 

Percent of 

School Districts 

School-Age 

Population 

Percent of 

School-Age 

Population 

1990 Census Total Population 14,310 100.0% 45,249,989 100.0% 

Total Population Missing 6 0.04% (X) (X) 

Less than 5,000 6,585 46.0% 2,585,923 5.7% 

5,000 to 9,999 2,590 18.1% 3,517,618 7.8% 

10,000 to 19,999 2,373 16.6% 6,098,283 13.5% 

20,000 to 39,999 1,464 10.2% 6,944,790 15.3% 

40,000 or more 1,292 9.0% 26,103,375 57.7% 

Census 2000 Total Population 14,310 100.0% 53,096,003 100.0% 

Total Population Missing 7 0.05% (X) (X) 

Less than 5,000 6,252 43.7% 2,406,420 4.5% 

5,000 to 9,999 2,550 17.8% 3,446,217 6.5% 

10,000 to 19,999 2,377 16.6% 6,177,845 11.6% 

20,000 to 39,999 1,637 11.4% 8,058,266 15.2% 

40,000 or more 1,487 10.4% 33,007,255 62.2% 

(X) Not Applicable. 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division 

Internet Release Date: June 3, 2004 

53
(leading dot indicates sub-part)

 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

.

 

. 

. 

Footnotes:

Table 11. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the School-Age Population inTwo 

Sets of School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population by School District Characteristics
 

All School Districts* 

School Districts with 

Additional Exclusions** 

Differences between Sets 

of School Districts 

Number of Number of Number of 

Districts Districts Districts 

Included in Included in Included in 

Population Group MAPE MAPE MAPE MAPE MAPE MAPE 

School-Age Children 

1990 Census Total Population 

13,876 12.9 10,058 11.6 3,818 1.3 

Under 5,000 6,163 16.2 4,329 14.2 1,834 2.1 

5,000 - 9,999 2,588 11.1 2,034 10.2 554 0.9 

10,000 - 19,999 2,373 10.2 1,795 9.6 578 0.6 

20,000 - 39,999 1,464 9.9 1,050 9.7 414 0.3 

40,000 or more 

Census 2000 Total Population 

1,288 9.2 850 8.8 438 0.5 

Under 5,000 5,830 16.2 4,075 14.1 1,755 2.2 

5,000 - 9,999 2,550 10.9 2,025 10.1 525 0.8 

10,000 - 19,999 2,376 10.2 1,791 9.6 585 0.6 

20,000 - 39,999 1,636 10.8 1,190 10.5 446 0.3 

40,000 or more 

Percent Change in the School-Age 

Population, 1990-2000 

1,484 10.0 977 9.6 507 0.4 

Decrease of more than 10.0% 1,922 20.4 1,318 16.1 604 4.4 

Decrease of 5.1% to 10.0% 1,085 7.8 853 7.1 232 0.7 

Decrease of 5.0% or less 

No Change or Increase of less than 

1,405 8.0 1,087 7.4 318 0.6 

5.0% 1,516 8.1 1,187 7.6 329 0.5 

Increase of 5.0% to 9.9% 1,536 8.6 1,190 8.7 346 -0.1 

Increase of 10% or more 6,363 14.5 4,423 14.1 1,940 0.4 

*School districts with known boundary errors, those affected by military base closures, extreme outliers, and with less than 30 school-age children 

enumerated in Census 2000 are excluded from the calculations of the percent errors. 

**In addition to the above exclusions, school districts with boundaries that are identical to county boundaries, Elementary and Secondary School Districts ar e 

also excluded from the calculations of the MAPEs. 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division 

Internet Release Date: June 3, 2004 

54
(leading dot indicates sub-part)

 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

.

 

. 

. 

Footnotes:

Table 12. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the Total Population in Two Sets 

of School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population by School District Characteristics 

All School Districts* 

School Districts with 

Additional Exclusions** 

Differences between Sets 

of School Districts 

Number of Number of Number of 

Districts Districts Districts 

Included in Included in Included in 

Population Group MAPE MAPE MAPE MAPE MAPE MAPE 

Total Population 

1990 Census Total Population 

14,256 9.1 10,140 8.1 4,116 0.9 

Under 5,000 6,543 11.6 4,411 9.4 2,132 2.2 

5,000 - 9,999 2,588 7.3 2,034 6.9 554 0.3 

10,000 - 19,999 2,373 7.0 1,795 7.3 578 -0.3 

20,000 - 39,999 1,464 6.7 1,050 7.3 414 -0.5 

40,000 or more 

Census 2000 Total Population 

1,288 6.4 850 7.0 438 -0.7 

Under 5,000 6,210 11.5 4,157 9.2 2,053 2.3 

5,000 - 9,999 2,550 7.3 2,025 7.0 525 0.2 

10,000 - 19,999 2,376 7.0 1,791 7.3 585 -0.2 

20,000 - 39,999 1,636 7.5 1,190 7.9 446 -0.4 

40,000 or more 

Percent Change in the Total 

Population, 1990-2000 

1,484 7.0 977 7.7 507 -0.7 

Decrease of more than 10.0% 1,091 26.1 668 19.1 423 7.1 

Decrease of 5.1% to 10.0% 1,055 8.5 820 7.5 235 1.0 

Decrease of 5.0% or less 

No Change or Increase of less than 

1,799 5.8 1,392 5.4 407 0.4 

5.0% 2,404 4.6 1,836 4.5 568 0.1 

Increase of 5.0% to 9.9% 2,091 4.8 1,489 4.8 602 0.1 

Increase of 10% or more 5,814 10.3 3,935 10.3 1,879 0.0 

*School districts with known boundary errors, those affected by military base closures, extreme outliers, and with less than 30 school-age children 

enumerated in Census 2000 are excluded from the calculations of the percent errors. 

**In addition to the above exclusions, school districts with boundaries that are identical to county boundaries, Elementary and Secondary School Districts ar e 

also excluded from the calculations of the MAPEs. 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division 

Internet Release Date: June 3, 2004 

55
(leading dot indicates sub-part)

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Footnotes:

Table 13. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the School-Age 

Population and Total Population in School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated 

Population by School District Characteristics for School Districts with 1990 Census Populations of 

20,000 or More 

School District Characteristics 

School-Age Population Total Population 

All School 

Districts* 

School Districts 

with Total 

Populations of 

20,000 or More 

All School 

Districts* 

School Districts 

with Total 

Populations of 

20,000 or More 

Total 12.9 9.6 9.1 6.6 

Percent Population Change, 1990-2000 

Decrease of more than 10.0% 20.4 12.3 26.1 15.3 

Decrease of 5.1% to 10.0% 7.8 9.4 8.5 8.5 

Decrease of 5.0% or less 8.0 7.5 5.8 5.2 

No Change or Increase of less than 5.0% 8.1 8.2 4.6 3.9 

Increase of 5.0% to 9.9% 8.6 6.8 4.8 4.4 

Increase of 10% or more 14.5 10.5 10.3 8.1 

Census Division 

East North Central 11.1 9.8 7.6 7.5 

East South Central 9.7 9.2 6.3 6.2 

Middle Atlantic 10.6 8.8 6.7 5.7 

Mountain 18.6 11.7 13.7 8.6 

New England 12.4 7.8 8.5 5.2 

Pacific 17.0 11.6 14.7 7.2 

South Atlantic 9.2 8.2 5.4 4.7 

West North Central 13.0 9.2 8.0 6.9 

West South Central 13.9 9.8 10.0 7.9 

Type of School District 

Elementary School District 18.8 11.7 14.6 7.6 

Secondary School District 19.6 16.4 7.2 6.5 

Unified School District 11.3 8.9 7.8 6.5 

*School districts with known boundary errors, those affected by military base closures, extreme outliers, and with less than 30 school-age 

children enumerated in Census 2000 are excluded from the calculations of the percent errors. 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division 

Internet Release Date: June 3, 2004 

56 
(leading dot indicates sub-part)

 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

Footnotes:

Table 14. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the School-Age Population and 

Total Population in Two Sets of School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population for 

Selected States 

All School Districts* 

School Districts with Identical 

School District and County 

Boundaries Excluded* 

Differences between Sets of 

School Districts 

Number of 

Districts Number of Number of 

Included in Districts Included Districts Included 

State MAPE MAPE in MAPE MAPE in MAPE MAPE 

School-Age Population 13,876 12.9 12,944 13.3 932 -0.3 

Selected States 

Alabama 130 10.9 105 11.5 25 -0.6 

Alaska 50 14.6 34 16.6 16 -2.1 

Georgia 183 10.4 52 13.9 131 -3.6 

Kentucky 178 9.0 101 10.1 77 -1.1 

Louisiana 66 5.9 4 4.9 62 1.0 

Mississippi 149 8.3 115 8.7 34 -0.5 

North Carolina 120 6.4 39 10.1 81 -3.7 

South Carolina 88 11.7 64 12.5 24 -0.8 

Tennessee 155 10.9 92 12.1 63 -1.3 

Utah 38 14.2 16 17.2 22 -3.0 

Virginia 137 11.5 10 10.6 127 0.8 

Total Population 14,256 9.1 13,324 9.4 932 -0.3 

Selected States 

Alabama 130 7.1 105 8.2 25 -1.1 

Alaska 51 9.8 35 11.9 16 -2.1 

Georgia 183 6.1 52 8.9 131 -2.8 

Kentucky 178 5.8 101 7.9 77 -2.1 

Louisiana 66 2.7 4 6.1 62 -3.4 

Mississippi 149 6.0 115 6.6 34 -0.6 

North Carolina 120 4.9 39 7.8 81 -2.9 

South Carolina 90 7.8 66 9.2 24 -1.5 

Tennessee 155 6.4 92 8.0 63 -1.6 

Utah 38 7.0 16 10.5 22 -3.5 

Virginia 137 4.1 10 8.6 127 -4.5 

*School districts with known boundary errors, those affected by military base closures, extreme outliers, and with less than 30 school-age children 

enumerated in Census 2000 are excluded from the calculations of the percent errors. 

Source: U.S Census Bureau, Population Division 

Internet Release Date: June 3, 2004 

57
(leading dot indicates sub-part)

 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

.

 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

Footnotes:

Table 15. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the School-Age Population in Two Sets 

of School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population School District Characteristics 

All School Districts* 

School Districts with 

Identical School District and 

County Boundaries 

Excluded* 

Differences between Sets of 

School Districts 

Number of Number of Number of 

Districts Districts Districts 

Included in Included in Included in 

Characteristics of School Districts MAPE MAPE MAPE MAPE MAPE MAPE 

School-Age Population 

1990 Census Total Population 

13,876 12.9 12,943 13.3 933 -0.3 

Under 5,000 6,163 16.2 6,082 16.3 81 -0.1 

5,000 - 9,999 2,588 11.1 2,428 11.2 160 -0.1 

10,000 - 19,999 2,373 10.2 2,121 10.4 252 -0.2 

20,000 - 39,999 1,464 9.9 1,255 10.5 209 -0.5 

40,000 or more 

Census 2000 Total Population 

1,288 9.2 1,057 9.7 231 -0.4 

Under 5,000 5,830 16.2 5,757 16.3 73 -0.1 

5,000 - 9,999 2,550 10.9 2,422 11.1 128 -0.1 

10,000 - 19,999 2,376 10.2 2,126 10.4 250 -0.2 

20,000 - 39,999 1,636 10.8 1,421 11.2 215 -0.5 

40,000 or more 

Percent Change in the School-Age 

Population, 1990-2000 

1,484 10.0 1,217 10.6 267 -0.6 

Decrease of more than 10.0% 1,922 20.4 1,818 21.2 104 -0.8 

Decrease of 5.1% to 10.0% 1,085 7.8 1,007 7.9 78 -0.2 

Decrease of 5.0% or less 

No Change or Increase of less than 

1,405 8.0 1,282 8.1 123 -0.2 

5.0% 1,516 8.1 1,400 8.1 116 -0.02 

Increase of 5.0% to 9.9% 1,536 8.6 1,429 8.7 107 -0.1 

Increase of 10% or more 

School District Type 

6,363 14.5 6,007 15.1 356 -0.6 

Elementary School District 2,405 18.8 2,403 18.8 2 0.01 

Secondary School District 477 19.6 477 19.6 0 0.0 

Unified School District 10,989 11.3 10,058 11.6 931 -0.3 

*School districts with known boundary errors, those affected by military base closures, extreme outliers, and with less than 30 school-age children enumerated 

in Census 2000 are excluded from the calculations of the percent errors. 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division 

Internet Release Date: June 3, 2004 

58
(leading dot indicates sub-part)

 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

.

 

. 

. 

. 

. 

. 

Footnotes:

Table 16. Mean Absolute Percent Errors (MAPE) for the April 1, 2000 Estimates of the Total Population in Two Sets of 

School Districts Compared with the Census 2000 Enumerated Population by School District Characteristics 

Characteristics of School Districts 

All School Districts* 

School Districts with Identical 

School District and County 

Boundaries Excluded* 

Differences between Sets of 

School Districts 

Number of 

Districts 

Included in 

MAPE MAPE 

Number of 

Districts Included 

in MAPE MAPE 

Number of 

Districts Included 

in MAPE MAPE 

Total Population 

1990 Census Total Population 

14,256 9.1 13,323 9.4 933 -0.3 

Under 5,000 6,543 11.6 6,462 11.6 81 -0.1 

5,000 - 9,999 2,588 7.3 2,428 7.4 160 -0.1 

10,000 - 19,999 2,373 7.0 2,121 7.4 252 -0.4 

20,000 - 39,999 1,464 6.7 1,255 7.3 209 -0.6 

40,000 or more 

Census 2000 Total Population 

1,288 6.4 1,057 7.0 231 -0.6 

Under 5,000 6,210 11.5 6,137 11.5 73 -0.05 

5,000 - 9,999 2,550 7.3 2,422 7.4 128 -0.1 

10,000 - 19,999 2,376 7.0 2,126 7.4 250 -0.4 

20,000 - 39,999 1,636 7.5 1,421 8.1 215 -0.6 

40,000 or more 

Percent Change in the Total 

Population, 1990-2000 

1,484 7.0 1,217 7.8 267 -0.8 

Decrease of more than 10.0% 1,091 26.1 1,064 26.6 27 -0.5 

Decrease of 5.1% to 10.0% 1,055 8.5 1,026 8.6 29 -0.1 

Decrease of 5.0% or less 

No Change or Increase of less 

1,799 5.8 1,716 5.9 83 -0.1 

than 5.0% 2,404 4.6 2,288 4.7 116 -0.1 

Increase of 5.0% to 9.9% 2,091 4.8 1,936 5.0 155 -0.1 

Increase of 10% or more 

School District Type 

5,814 10.3 5,293 10.9 521 -0.6 

Elementary School District 2,684 14.6 2,682 14.6 2 -0.001 

Secondary School District 491 7.2 491 7.2 0 0.0 

Unified School District 11,071 7.8 10,140 8.1 931 -0.3 

*School districts with known boundary errors, those affected by military base closures, extreme outliers, and with less than 30 school-age children enumerated in 

Census 2000 are excluded from the calculations of the percent errors. 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division 

Internet Release Date: June 3, 2004 

59
POPULATION DIVISION WORKING PAPER SERIES
 

For copies of these working papers, please contact the Statistical Information Staff, Population 

Division, Bureau of the Census, Washington, DC 20233-8800 (301)763-2422/pop@census.gov 

No. 1 - The Census Bureau Approach for Allocating International Migration to States, 

Counties, and Places: 1981-1991. David L. Word. October 1992. 

No. 2 - Geographic Coding of Administrative Records--Past Experience and Current 

Research. Douglas K.Sater. April 1993. 

No. 3 - Postcensal Population Estimates: States, Counties, and Places. John F. Long. 

August 1993. 

No. 4 - Evaluating the Passel-Word Spanish Surname List: 1990 Decennial Census Post 

Enumeration Survey Results. R. Colby Perkins. August 1993. 

No. 5 - Evaluation of Postcensal County Estimates for the 1980s. Sam T. Davis. 

March 1994. 

No. 6 - Metropolitan Growth and Expansion in the 1980s. Richard L. Forstall and James D. 

Fitzsimmons. April 1993. 

No. 7 - Geographic Coding of Administrative Records -- Current Research in ZIP/Sector-toCounty Coding Process. Douglas K. Sater. June 1994. 

No. 8 - Illustrative Ranges of the Distribution of Undocumented Immigrants by State. 

Edward W. Fernandez and J. Gregory Robinson. October 1994. 

No. 9 - Estimates of Emigration of the Foreign-Born Population: 1980-l990. Bashir Ahmed 

and J. Gregory Robinson. December 1994. 

No. 10 - Estimation of the Annual Emigration of U.S. Born Persons by Using Foreign 

Censuses and Selected Administrative Data: Circa 1980. Edward W. Fernandez. 

January 1995. 

No. 11- Using Analytic Techniques to Evaluate the 1990 Census Coverage of Young 

Hispanics. Edward Fernandez. May 1995. 

No. 12 - Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Areas: New Approaches to Geographical 

Definition. Donald C. Dahmann and James D. Fitzsimmons. October 1995. 

No. 13 - Building a Spanish Surname List for the 1990's--New Approach to An Old Problem. 

David L. Word and R. Colby Perkins, Jr. February 1996. 

No. 14 - Fertility of American Men. Amara Bachu. March 1996. 

60 
No. 15 - Comparisons of Selected Social and Economic Characteristics Between Asians, 

Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, and American Indians (Including Alaskan Natives). 

Edward W. Fernandez. June 1996. 

No. 16 - Findings on Questions on Race and Hispanic Origin Tested in the 1996 National 

Content Survey. Prepared in the Population Division by the Racial Statistics Branch 

and the Ethnic and Hispanic Statistics Branch. December 1996. 

No. 17 - Race and Ethnicity Classification Consistency Between the Census Bureau and the 

National Center for Health Statistics. Larry Sink. February 1997. 

No. 18 - Results of the 1996 Race and Ethnic Targeted Test. May 1997. 

No. 19 - Who Responds/Who Doesn’t? Analyzing Variation in Mail Response Rates During 

the 1990 Census. David L. Word. July 1997. 

No. 20 - Trends in Marital Status of U.S. Women at First Birth: 1930 to 1994. Amara Bachu. 

March 1998. 

No. 21 - State Estimates of Organized Child Care Facilities. Lynne Casper and Martin 

O’Connell. March 1998. 

No. 22 - How Well Does the Current Population Survey Measure the Foreign-Born Population 

in the United States. Dianne Schmidley and J. Gregory Robinson. April 1998 

No. 23 - Poverty, Family Structure, and Child Well-Being: Indicators from the SIPP. Jason 

Fields and Kristin Smith. April 1998 

No. 24 - Child Well-Being Indicators from the SIPP. Kristin Smith, Loretta Bass, and Jason 

Fields. April 1998 

No. 25 - Timing of First Births: 1930-34, 1990-94. Amara Bachu. May 1998 

No. 26 - Co-Resident Grandparents and Grandchildren: Grandparent Maintained Families. 

Lynne Casper and Ken Bryson. March 1998. 

No. 27 - Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States: 

1790 to 1990. Campbell Gibson. June 1998 

No. 28 - Are There Differences in Voting Behavior Between Naturalized and Native-born 

Americans? Loretta E. Bass and Lynne M. Casper. March 1999. 

No. 29 - Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-born Population of the United States: 

1850-1990. Campbell J. Gibson. February 1999 

61 
No. 30 - Direct Measures of Poverty as Indicators of Economic Need: Evidence from the 

Survey of Income and Program Participation. Kurt J. Bauman. November 1998 

No. 31 - American Community Survey and Intercensal Population Estimates: Where Are the 

Cross-roads? Amy Symens. December 1998 

No. 32 - Women’s Labor Force Attachment Patterns and Maternity Leave: A Review of the 

Literature. Kristen Smith and Amara Bachu. January 1999 

No. 33 - Evaluation of Relationship, Marital Status, and Grandparents Items on the Census 

2000 Dress Rehearsal. Charles Clark and Jason Fields. April 1999. 

No. 34 - Unbinding the Ties: Edit Effects of Marital Status on Same Gender Couples. Charles 

Clark and Jason Fields. April 1999. 

No. 35 - Racial-Ethnic and Gender Differences in Returns to Cohabitation and Marriage: 

Evidence from the Current Population Survey. Philip N. Cohen. May 1999. 

No. 36 - How Does POSSLQ Measure Up? Historical Estimates of Cohabitation. Lynne 

Casper, Philip N. Cohen, and Tavia Simmons. May 1999. 

No. 37 - Childlessness Among American Women On the Rise? Amara Bachu. May 1999. 

No. 38 - Methodology and Assumptions for the Population Projections of the United States: 

1999 to 2100. Frederick Hollman, Tammany Mulder, and Jeffrey Kallan. 

January 1999. 

No. 39 - What Do We Know About the Undercount of Children? Kirsten K. West and 

J. Gregory Robinson. August 1999. 

No. 40 - Canceled 

No. 41 - Canceled 

No. 42 - Measures of Help Available to Households in Need: Their Relationship to 

Well-Being, Welfare, and Work. Kurt Bauman and Barbara Downs. May 2000 

No. 43 - Have We Reached the Top? Educational Attainment Projections of the U.S. 

Population. Jennifer Cheeseman Day and Kurt Bauman. May 2000. 

No. 44 - The Emerging American Voter: An Examination of the Increase in the Black Vote in 

November 1998. Avalaura L. Gaither and Eric C. Newburger. June 2000 

No. 45 - An Analysis of State and County Population Changes by Characteristics: 1990-1999. 

Amy Symens Smith, Bashir Ahmed, and Larry Sink. November 2000. 

62 
No. 46 - The Effect of Work and Welfare on Living Conditions in Single Parent Households. 

Kurt Bauman. August 2000. 

No. 47 - Canceled 

No. 48 - Canceled 

No. 49 - Variations in State Mortality From 1960 to 1990. Monique Oosse. September 2003. 

No. 50 - Accuracy of the U.S. Census Bureau National Population Projections and Their 

Respective Components of Change. Tammany Mulder. November 2002. 

No. 51 - U.S. Census Bureau Measurement of Net International Migration to the United 

States: 1990 to 2000. Tammany Mulder, Frederick Hollmann, Lisa Lollock, Rachel 

Cassidy, Joseph Costanzo, and Josephine Baker. February 2002. 

No. 52 - At-Risk Conditions of U.S. School-Age Children. Robert Kominski, Amie Jamieson, 

and Gladys Martinez. June 2001. 

No. 53 - Home Schooling in the United States: Trends and Characteristics. K. J. Bauman. 

August 2001. 

No. 54 - Evaluation of the 1990 School District Level Population Estimates Based on the 

Synthetic Ratio Approach. E. R. Miller. September 2001. 

No. 55 - State Estimates of Child Care Establishments 1977-1997. Grace O’Neil and Martin 

O’Connell. August 2001. 

No. 56 - Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1990, and by 

Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, for the United States, Regions, Divisions, and States. 

Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung. September 2002. 

No. 57 - Evaluating Forecast Error in State Population Projections Using Census 2000 Counts. 

Paul Campbell. July 2002. 

No. 58 - Evaluating Components of International Migration: Estimates of the Foreign-Born 

Population by Migrant Status: 2000. Kevin Deardorff and Lisa Blumerman. 

November 2002. 

No. 59 - Evaluating Components of International Migration: Legal Migrants. Marc Perry, 

Barbara Van der Vate, Lea Auman, and Kathy Morris. November 2001. 

No. 60 - Evaluating Components of International Migration: Temporary (Legal) Migrants. 

Rachel Cassidy and Lucinda Pearson. November 2001 

63 
No. 61 - Evaluating Components of International Migration: The Residual Foreign 

Born. 

Joe Costanzo, Cynthia Davis, Caribert Irazi, Daniel Goodkind, Roberto 

Ramirez. January 2002. 

No. 62 - Evaluating Components of International Migration: Foreign-Born Emigrants. 

Tammany Mulder, Betsy Guzmán, and Angela Brittingham. June 2002. 

No. 63 - Evaluating Components of Internation Migration: Native-Born Emigrants. 

Jim C. Gibbs, Gregory S. Harper, Marc J. Rubin, and Hyon B. Shin. January 

2003. 

No. 64 - Evaluating Components of International Migration: Migration Between 

Puerto Rico and the United States. Matt Christenson. January 2002. 

No. 65 - Evaluating Components of International Migration: Quality of Foreign-Born 

and Hispanic Population Data. Art Cresce, Roberto Ramirez, and Gregory 

Spencer. July 2002. 

No. 66 - Evaluating Components of International Migration: Consistency of 2000 

Nativity Data. Nolan Malone. January 2002. 

No. 67 - Evaluation of Census Bureau’s1995-2025 State Population Projections. 

Ching Li Wang. October 2002. 

No. 68 - Guide To International Migration Statistics: The Sources, Collection, and 

Processing of Foreign-Born Population Data at the U.S. Census Bureau. 

Joseph M. Costanzo, Cynthia J. Davis, and Nolan Malone. October 2002. 

No. 69 - Seasonality of Moves and Duration and Tenure of Residence: 1996. Jason 

Schachter and Jeffrey Kuenzi. December 2002. 

No. 70 - Evaluation of 2000 Subcounty Population Estimates. Greg Harper, Chuck 

Coleman, and Jason Devine. May 2003. 

No. 71 - People Might Move Out but Housing Units Don’t: An Evaluation of the State 

and County Housing Unit Estimates. Jason Devine and Charles Coleman. 

April 2003. 

No. 72 - Analysis of General Hispanic Responses in Census 2000. Arthur R. Cresce 

and Roberto R. Ramirez. September 2003. 

No. 73 - Measuring the Foreign-Born Population in the United States With the Current 

Population Survey: 1994-2002. A. Dianne Schmidley and J. Gregory 

Robinson. October 2003. 

64
 
No. 74 - Evaluation of April 1, 2000 School District Population Estimates Based on the 

Synthetic Ratio Method. Monique Oosse. Release Pending. 

65