Template:NCES School ID/doc

This template is designed to allow quick standardized inline references citing the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data (CCD) website to be created for articles containing statistics about public (government funded) schools in the United States. The CCD website contains enrollment numbers, faculty head-counts and other statistics for most schools in the US. It is envisioned that this data will be particularly suited for use in an.

In its most common usage, this will produce text of the School ID as both a direct hyperlink to the NCES webpage for the school and an inline reference.

Restrictions

 * This should be used ONLY for public (government funded) US schools. See  for a similar template for private schools.
 * DO NOT use subst: with this template! The url created internally could theoretically change. If it does, it is hoped that the url that this template defines can be updated, thus updating the links effortlessly in perhaps thousands of articles. If you use subst, your article will have to be edited by hand or live on with a dead link!
 * By default the reference name is "nces_sch", therefore use this template only once in an article unless you supply different ref_name parameters for additional uses.

Usage
On a page needing the reference:
 * Lookup the school statistics by going to The NCES CCD School search page. After submitting the search, click on the link for the individual school to get the school's statistics page.
 * Note some information:
 * The "NCES School ID". As of this writing, there are four reference numbers given. Carefully choose only this one.
 * The name of the school as shown at NCES. This is often slightly different than the actual name of the school. The name shown should NOT influence the name you have chosen to use in your article!
 * You may also wish to note any statistics that the NCES site has that would be of interest.
 * In your article, where the id number would go, enter.
 * SAVE the article!
 * Edit the article again.
 * You will now have the ID number with an associated reference called "nces_sch". The reference has been fleshed out to a full web citation for you!
 * Since you now have the named reference, for any of the interesting statistics from the NCES data used in your article, you may simply tag them with and you have them fully cited!
 * As with any article using references, remember to add or at the bottom of your article.

Parameters

 * 1st parameter (unnamed): mandatory is the "NCES School ID" and is mandatory.
 * school_name: mandatory This is the name of the school as listed at the NCES database . This is needed to make the citation correct.
 * access_date: mandatory The date used in the cite reference.
 * do_not_render: If present with a value, will suppress the school ID as the text in front of the reference. If this is done, then your text immediately before the brackets is where the reference will go.
 * do_not_show_link: If present with a value, will suppress the school ID as a direct link to the NCES data page. If do_not_render is in effect, this is ignored.
 * ref_name: If supplied, will override the default of "nces_sch" as the reference name.