What Is SEDREF and How Can New York Families Use It to Check School Information?

SEDREF — the State Education Department Reference File — is the New York State Education Department’s authoritative directory of educational institutions. It is the reference NYSED uses to identify and contact public, nonpublic, and charter schools, along with other entities that do business with the department. For families, SEDREF is best understood as a verification tool: it can confirm a school’s official name, physical and mailing address, administrative contacts, grade organization, and whether the institution is listed as active or inactive. It is not a report card, and it does not publish test scores, graduation rates, or accountability designations.

What SEDREF Is — and What It Is Not

According to NYSED, SEDREF is a database that “serves as the authoritative source for information on educational institutions in New York State, including public, nonpublic, and charter schools, as well as other entities doing business with the Department.” The department describes three broad uses: communication with schools, data collection, and access to secure online systems.

Those uses explain why SEDREF looks the way it does. It is built around identity and contact information rather than academic results. The dynamic reports NYSED publishes from SEDREF contain institution contact information (phone, fax, email, and URL), administrative contact information, and physical and mailing addresses with geographic information system (GIS) data.

What SEDREF does not do is rank schools, report student performance, or publish funding figures. Families looking for those things need to go to other NYSED tools, such as school report cards or the department’s data site. Keeping that distinction clear prevents a common misunderstanding: a school appearing in SEDREF means it is recognized in NYSED’s reference file, not that it has met any particular performance standard.

What Information SEDREF Holds

Based on NYSED’s description, SEDREF reports can be organized into several categories:

• Institution contact details — phone, fax, email, and website for a school or other institution.
• Administrative contacts — the same fields for the people or offices responsible for the institution.
• Physical and mailing addresses, including GIS location information.
• Status and classification — reports can separate institutions by active or inactive status, by institution type and subtype, and by grade organization.

That last category is often the most useful for families. If you are trying to confirm whether a school is a public district school, a charter school, or a nonpublic school, or whether it serves elementary, middle, or high school grades, SEDREF’s classification reports are designed to answer that question. NYSED also notes that SEDREF covers “other entities doing business with the Department,” so the file is broader than a simple school list.

How New York Families Can Access SEDREF

SEDREF data is published through NYSED’s dynamic reports, which the department now hosts in a COGNOS reporting system. NYSED states that these COGNOS reports have replaced the older Discoverer reports. The reports are built from a database that is refreshed nightly, so NYSED advises users to re-run a report each time rather than relying on a previously downloaded copy. That nightly refresh matters for families: a school that closed, moved, or changed its contact information recently may look different from one week to the next.

To use the reports:

1. Go to NYSED’s SEDREF main information page.
2. Open the dynamic report you need by clicking its name for a quick view, or choose one of the available output formats.
3. Adjust your browser’s pop-up settings, because the reports use pop-ups.

NYSED states that the reports are accessible via Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Google Chrome. Because some reports are large, the department cautions that data is pulled dynamically and may take time to load.

For questions about the data, NYSED directs users to datasupport@nysed.gov. The department also publishes a separate help article describing the SEDREF Query as “the SEDREF – Core Information on SED Institutions.” That help article is dated October 31, 2019, so families should treat its interface details as background rather than a current step-by-step guide.

A Practical Checklist for Checking a School

If you are evaluating a school — a district school, a charter school, or a nonpublic school — SEDREF can help you confirm the basics. Consider checking:

• Official name and address. Does the school’s name and physical address match what you were told or what appears on a website?
• Active or inactive status. Is the institution currently listed as active? A school that appears inactive may have closed, merged, or changed status.
• Institution type and subtype. Is it classified the way you expect — for example, as a public school, charter school, or nonpublic school?
• Grade organization. Does the listed grade span match the grades the school actually serves?
• Contact information. Are the phone number, email, and website current? If they are wrong, that is a signal to verify through another source.
• Administrative contact. Who does NYSED list as the responsible administrator or office?

These checks are especially useful when a school is new, when a school has recently changed its name or location, or when you are comparing information from multiple websites and want a single official reference point.

An Illustrative Example

The following scenario is illustrative and does not describe a real school. Suppose a family is considering a charter school that recently moved to a new building. A neighborhood website still lists the old address. By checking SEDREF, the family can confirm the school’s current physical and mailing address and confirm that the institution is still listed as active. If the grade organization in SEDREF also matches the grades the school advertises, the family has a consistent baseline. If any of those details differ, the family knows to ask the school directly before relying on the other source.

What SEDREF Cannot Tell You

It is important to be clear about the limits. SEDREF is a reference file, not an evaluation tool. The NYSED pages reviewed for this article describe contact, address, and classification data. They do not describe SEDREF as a source for:

• Student test scores or academic performance;
• Graduation rates or chronic absenteeism;
• School accountability designations;
• Per-pupil spending or other funding figures;
• Safety, climate, or program offerings.

If you need those, you will need to consult other NYSED resources. SEDREF can help you make sure you are looking at the right institution — but it will not tell you how that institution is performing. It also will not tell you whether a school is a good fit for a particular child, which depends on factors SEDREF does not measure.

How SEDREF Fits With Other NYSED Data Sources

Think of SEDREF as the foundation layer. Before you can compare schools or look up performance data, you need to know that you are comparing the correct institutions. SEDREF provides that common reference: a single, department-maintained list of schools and other institutions, with contact and classification information.

Once you have confirmed a school’s identity in SEDREF, you can move to other sources for the questions SEDREF does not answer. Families researching school options, for example, may want to combine SEDREF’s directory information with performance and accountability data from NYSED’s other reporting systems. Because SEDREF is refreshed nightly while many performance datasets are released annually, the two types of information will not always be updated on the same schedule.

Questions Families Often Ask

Two questions come up repeatedly. First, does a SEDREF listing mean a school is approved or high-quality? No — it means the institution is present in NYSED’s reference file. Second, is SEDREF only for school administrators? No. NYSED publishes the reports publicly through its SEDREF information page, and the fields it exposes — address, contacts, type, grades, status — are exactly the kind of directory details families need when verifying a school.

Sources and Methodology

This article is based on NYSED’s SEDREF information pages and help documentation, retrieved and source-checked on October 16, 2026. The description of SEDREF’s purpose, contents, reporting system, refresh schedule, and browser compatibility comes from NYSED’s main SEDREF information page and SEDREF home page. The description of the SEDREF Query as “the SEDREF – Core Information on SED Institutions” comes from NYSED’s data support help article dated October 31, 2019.

NYSED’s pages do not state a specific data period for the SEDREF reports; the database is described as refreshed nightly. Where this article describes what SEDREF “cannot” tell you, that reflects the absence of those data categories in the reviewed NYSED descriptions, not a statement that no other NYSED system contains them. The illustrative example is labeled as such and does not describe a real school or district.