The Federal Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau categorize all U.S. school districts into one of four groups: Cities, Suburbs, Towns, and Rural. Each group is then further subdivided into three additional categories (See full NCES description). Rural schools are broken into these three categories:

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• Fringe: rural territory that is less than or equal to 5 miles from an urbanized area, as well as rural territory that is less than or equal to 2.5 miles from an urban cluster

• Distant: rural territory that is more than 5 miles but less than or equal to 25 miles from an urbanized area, as well as rural territory that is more than 2.5 miles but less than or equal to 10 miles from an urban cluster

• Remote: rural territory that is more than 25 miles from an urbanized area and is also more than 10 miles from an urban cluster