Education Data

This MCP server provides access to the Urban Institute's Education Data API, letting you query both detailed and aggregated education data through a simple, Claude-friendly interface. You can retrieve enrollment, directory, finance, and other education data across schools, districts, and colleges with focused queries and flexible summaries.

How to use

You connect your MCP client to the edu_data MCP server and issue data requests through the available tools. Start by ensuring the server is accessible from your environment, then invoke the tools to pull detailed records or summaries from the Education Data API. The server handles the underlying API calls and returns structured results you can analyze or display in your workflow.

Two primary capabilities are exposed: one for retrieving detailed education data and another for getting aggregated summaries. Use these tools to explore data by level (schools, school-districts, college-university), source (ccd, ipeds, crdc, etc.), and topic (enrollment, directory, finance, and more). You can refine results by grouping fields, applying filters (such as year or grade), and controlling the number of results.

How to install

Prerequisites: you need Node.js and npm installed on your system. Verify with node -v and npm -v.

Step 1: Clone the MCP server repository and navigate into it.

Step 2: Install dependencies.

Step 3: Build the server.

Step 4: Make the server available for execution via npx.

Configuration and usage notes

This MCP server is designed to be used with Claude. You configure Claude to include the edu_data MCP server so you can issue data requests directly from Claude prompts.

The following configuration examples show how to register the server for Claude Desktop and Claude in VSCode. These configurations make the MCP server available under the name edu_data.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "edu_data": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["edu-data-mcp-server"],
      "disabled": false,
      "alwaysAllow": []
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "edu_data": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["edu-data-mcp-server"],
      "disabled": false,
      "alwaysAllow": []
    }
  }
}

Troubleshooting and notes

If you encounter issues starting the server, verify Node.js and npm are available, ensure dependencies are installed, and confirm the build step completed successfully. Check that the command used to start the server matches the one shown in the local configuration blocks.

Available tools

get_education_data

Retrieves detailed education data from the Education Data API by level, source, topic, and optional subtopics and filters. It supports labeling and result limiting to tailor responses for your analysis.

get_education_data_summary

Retrieves aggregated education data by level, source, and topic. It computes a specified statistic (sum, avg, count, median) over a chosen variable and groups results by one or more keys, with optional filters.