The School District Data Book (SDDB) of the National Center for Education Statistics contains data on over 15,000 local education agencies (LEAs) that make it possible to compare data aggregated at district, county, state, and national levels on hundreds of variables. The SDDB was used to examine differences between the Topeka (Kansas) public school district and surrounding districts to explore the hypothesis that new growth and investment in infrastructure were taking place in the city while the inner city core was in a slow decline. Comparisons with surrounding districts showed a lower child yield rate for the city schools and a substantially higher percentage of vacant housing. Topeka did not have an unusually high number of schools with high concentrations of minority students. Graphic Information System (GIS) software was also used to determine characteristics of the city schools through Census data. The MapInfo and P-Census programs were used to compile information (presented in three attached pages) on the area to be served by two projected Topeka magnet schools. The SDDB and Census-use tools give researchers new tools to analyze a host of student and household demographic variables and school district data. (Contains 4 tables.) (SLD)