IES Blog

Institute of Education Sciences

Listening to Schools: The National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) Shares Educators’ Perspectives on Coronavirus Impacts on Education

As the 2020–21 school year gets underway, many are considering the tremendous impact the coronavirus will have on classrooms—whether in person or virtual—across the United States. What can be done to support policymakers and education sector leaders as they strive to address, amongst other concerns, potentially unequitable learning opportunities and mental health challenges?

The National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) will gather critical information from teachers and principals about the changes implemented and lessons learned by schools and their staff during the 2020–21 school year. The NTPS is a nationwide system of related surveys that collect data on elementary and secondary education in the United States, including teaching and working conditions in schools and characteristics of public and private school teachers and principals at the state level.

Conducted every 2 to 3 years, NTPS provides critical representative data to policymakers and researchers on school organization, staff evaluations, teacher and principal preparation and professional development, classes taught, school characteristics, demographics of the teacher and principal labor force, and other important education topics. These data serve to inform those who set funding and other priorities, including Congress, the U.S. Department of Education, state education agencies, and public school districts. The data also allow important comparative analyses of key education personnel in public and private educational settings.

Unlike many other studies capturing information about the coronavirus and related education issues, NTPS allows for comparisons at the national level, between states for public schools and by affiliation for private schools, and over time. It is important that NTPS questionnaires reach selected teachers, principals, and other staff during these changing times. The information they provide will help decision makers evaluate the effects of school workplace conditions, salaries, and training opportunities on the educational workforce and aid in the U.S Department of Education’s program planning in the areas of teacher recruitment and retention, teaching policies, and teacher education.

But participation is key! If school staff do not participate in NTPS when selected, the data will provide an incomplete and possibly misleading description of the impact of the coronavirus on school communities, potentially affecting funding and other policy decisions.  

 

What do we know about the coronavirus and the 202021 school year?

By May 2020, in just the United States alone, at least 50.8 million public school students were affected by ordered or recommended K–12 school closures. According to Education Week reports, school districts unveiled a variety of reopening plans for the 2020–21 school year that include remote, hybrid or partial in-person, or full in-person learning approaches. As of September 2, 73 percent of the 100 largest school districts had announced they wiould resume with remote learning only. Information from the Census Bureau’s experimental weekly Household Pulse Survey suggests that students in one of every six households do not usually have access to the internet for education purposes.

Regardless of each school district’s decision for the beginning of the school year, local and state education leaders are responsible for numerous decisions on behalf of their schools, students, teachers, and school staff that rely heavily on the availability of reliable data. But most of the existing information on the education sector’s response to the coronavirus is at the district or state level and does not typically include information about experiences of teachers and principals directly from these critical education providers. Also, because of varying reporting resources and practices across the nation’s 130,000 public and private K–12 schools, a consistent national-level understanding of coronavirus-related education problems is not readily available. As a result, key policymakers and other decision makers currently have little information from individual teachers or principals about coronavirus-related problems specifically and education issues more generally. NTPS provides an opportunity for the voices of teachers, principals, and other school staff to be included in the conversation.

 

How can NTPS show what is happening in K–12 schools across the United States?

Last administered in 2017–18, the NTPS is set to resume in the 2020–21 school year and new questions have been added to reflect changes that may have occurred due to the coronavirus. This offers an opportunity for sampled teachers, principals, and schools to provide valuable data that explain their experience as educators during the coronavirus pandemic. In addition to new items, data gleaned from recurring questions will capture changes over time and yield important insights into areas of success and areas in need of further support. Data from prior school years has already been used during the pandemic to highlight differences in the number of health staff, such as school nurses, and mental health staff, such as counselors, psychologists, and social workers. Gathering more responses to these and other questions will allow for trend analyses, giving policymakers and other decision makers a better understanding of changes occurring at the teacher, principal, and school levels.

 

How will the survey be conducted?

The NTPS data collection process is both voluntary and self-administered, meaning all questionnaires can be completed without any in-person contact and without interruption for staff who may be fully working remotely. Teachers, principals, and schools who have been sampled to participate in the survey will be contacted by mail and e-mail and invited to complete the questionnaires online. Sampled participants will also receive paper surveys at their school mailing addresses.

 

Why is this survey important?

Responses from sampled schools ensure that NTPS estimates are reliable and accurately reflect the activities of all U.S. public and private schools. These data are vital as policymakers, researchers, families, and school staff strive to understand and respond to the effects of the current pandemic and build a better, stronger education sector for the future—including improved response options for potential future pandemics. NTPS responses during the 2020–21 school year can be compared to data from future NTPS cycles to understand possible longer-term impacts of the current significant changes to education delivery in the country and across the states. These data provide national and state policymakers with a distinct understanding of the condition of K–12 education in their communities and will remain important as leaders monitor changes in the education sector in future years.

For more information about the National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS), please visit https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/ntps/.

 

By Julia Merlin, NCES

What Do Parents Look for When Choosing an Early Childhood Care Arrangement?

The short answer to this question is reliability. However, new 2019 data from the National Household Education Surveys (NHES) program indicate that parents typically consider many factors when choosing care arrangements for their young children.  

The Early Childhood Program Participation: 2019 survey found that 59 percent of children age 5 and under were in a care arrangement (including care from a relative other than a parent, care from a nonrelative, or attendance at a preschool or day care) in 2019. The parents of these children were asked how important various factors were when choosing their child’s care arrangement. The reliability of the arrangement was the factor most often rated as “very important”: 87 percent of children had parents who rated reliability as very important when choosing a care arrangement for their child (figure 1). This factor was followed by available times for care and qualifications of staff (75 and 72 percent, respectively). A majority of children’s parents also rated the following factors as very important:

  • Learning activities (68 percent)
  • Location (60 percent)
  • Time spent with other children (59 percent)
  • Cost (55 percent)

Figure 1. Among children age 5 and under who were not yet in kindergarten and were in at least one weekly care arrangement, percentage whose parents indicated that the factor was “very important” when choosing child’s care arrangement: 2019

SOURCE: Cui, J., and Natzke, L. (2020). Early Childhood Program Participation: 2019 (NCES 2020-075). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.


For many factors, the percentage of children whose parents rated the factor as very important when choosing a care arrangement was similar across the children’s age ranges. However, for 5 of the 11 factors, ratings varied depending on the child’s age. For example, the percentage of children whose parents rated time spent with other children as very important increased with the age of the child (figure 2). Similarly, learning activities were rated as very important more often for children ages 3–5 (74 percent) than for younger children (59 percent for children under age 1; 64 percent for children ages 1–2).


Figure 2.  Among children age 5 and under who were not yet in kindergarten and were in at least one weekly care arrangement, percentage whose parents indicated that the factor was “very important” when choosing child’s care arrangement, by age of child: 2019

SOURCE: Cui, J., and Natzke, L. (2020). Early Childhood Program Participation: 2019 (NCES 2020-075). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.


The opposite pattern was true for the number of children in group and website ratings. Both of these factors were rated as very important more often by parents of children under age 1 (51 and 35 percent, respectively) than by parents of children ages 3–5 (40 and 25 percent, respectively).

More detailed information about child care arrangements is available in Early Childhood Program Participation: 2019. For a look at why parents of K–12 students choose schools for their children, check out this blog post and the recent NCES release Parent and Family Involvement in Education: 2019.

 

By Lisa Hudson, NCES

Teaching with Technology: U.S. Teachers’ Perceptions and Use of Digital Technology in an International Context

The coronavirus pandemic forced teachers across the world to immediately transition instruction to a virtual setting in early 2020. To understand U.S. teachers’ level of preparedness for this shift in an international context, this blog examines recent international data from U.S. teachers’ responses to questions on the following topics:

  • Their perceptions of information and communications technologies (ICT) resources
  • Their use of ICT for instruction prior to the pandemic

In general, the results suggest that U.S. teachers are more resourced in ICT than their international peers, and they use ICT at a similar frequency at school when teaching.

 

Teachers’ perceptions of ICT resources at their school

The quantity and quality of ICT resources available in school systems prior to the coronavirus pandemic may impact teachers’ access to such resources for instructional purposes while classrooms are functioning in a virtual format. The United States participated in the 2018 International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS), which asked questions about ICT resources to a nationally representative sample of eighth-grade teachers from 14 education systems.

The results from this study show that 86 percent of eighth-grade teachers both in the United States and across ICILS 2018 education systems “strongly agreed” or “agreed” that ICT is considered a priority for use in teaching (figure 1). Compared with the ICILS 2018
averages,[1] higher percentages of U.S. eighth-grade teachers “strongly agreed” or “agreed” with various statements about the use of ICT.

While 86 percent of U.S. eighth-grade teachers “strongly agreed” or “agreed” that “ICT is considered a priority for use in teaching,” only 61 percent “strongly agreed” or “agreed” that “there is sufficient opportunity for me to develop expertise in ICT” (figure 1). Additionally, 62 percent of U.S. eighth-grade teachers “strongly agreed” or “agreed” that “there is enough time to prepare lessons that incorporate ICT.” These disparities may have had an impact on teacher capacity during the sudden shift to 100 percent online learning as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, which would be a good topic for future research and analyses.  


Figure 1. Percentage of eighth-grade teachers who reported that they “strongly agree” or “agree” with statements about using ICT in teaching at school, by statement: 2018

p < .05. Significantly different from the U.S. estimate at the .05 level of statistical significance.

¹ Did not meet the guidelines for a sample participation rate of 85 percent and not included in the international average.
² National Defined Population covers 90 to 95 percent of National Target Population.
NOTE: ICT = information and communications technologies. The ICILS 2018 average is the average of all participating education systems meeting international technical standards, with each education system weighted equally. Statements are ordered by the percentages of U.S. teachers reporting “strongly agree” or “agree” from largest to smallest.
SOURCE: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), The International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS), 2018. Modified reproduction of figure 17 from U.S. Results from the 2018 ICILS Web Report.


Teachers’ perceptions of the use of ICT for instruction

Teachers’ views on the role of ICT in virtual instruction during the coronavirus pandemic are not yet clear. However, in 2018, when instruction was conducted in physical classrooms, most U.S. eighth-grade teachers participating in ICILS expressed positive perceptions about “using ICT in teaching and learning at school,” as did many teachers internationally.

Among eighth-grade teachers in the United States, 95 percent agreed that ICT “enables students to access better sources of information,” 92 percent agreed that ICT “helps students develop greater interest in learning,” and 92 percent agreed that ICT “helps students work at a level appropriate to their learning needs.” On average across other education systems participating in ICILS, at least 85 percent of teachers agreed with each of these statements (Fraillon et al. 2019).

Seventy-five percent of U.S. eighth-grade teachers in 2018 agreed that ICT “improves academic performance of students,” which was higher than the ICILS international average of 71 percent. The percentages of teachers who agreed with this statement varied across education systems, from three-quarters or more of teachers in Chile, Denmark, Kazakhstan, and Portugal to less than half of teachers in Finland and North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany).

 

Frequency of teachers’ use of ICT

Teachers’ reported use of ICT for instruction in physical classroom settings may provide insight into their level of experience as they transition to virtual settings during the coronavirus pandemic.

In 2018, half of U.S. eighth-grade teachers reported “using ICT at school when teaching” every day, which was not significantly different from the ICILS average of 48 percent. However, the U.S. percentage was lower than the percentages of teachers in Moscow (76 percent), Denmark (72 percent), and Finland (57 percent) (figure 2).


Figure 2. Percentage of eighth-grade teachers who reported using ICT at school every day when teaching, by education system: 2018

p < .05. Significantly different from the U.S. estimate at the .05 level of statistical significance.
¹ Met guidelines for sample participation rates only after replacement schools were included.
² National Defined Population covers 90 to 95 percent of National Target Population.
³ Did not meet the guidelines for a sample participation rate of 85 percent and not included in the international average.
⁴ Data collected at the beginning of the school year.
NOTE: ICT = information and communications technologies. The ICILS 2018 average is the average of all participating education systems meeting international technical standards, with each education system weighted equally. Education systems are ordered by their percentages of teachers reporting using ICT at school when teaching from largest to smallest. Italics indicate the benchmarking participants.
SOURCE: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), The International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS), 2018. Modified reproduction of figure 15 from U.S. Results from the 2018 ICILS Web Report.


For more information on teachers and technology, check out NCES’s ICILS 2018 website, the international ICILS website, and the earlier NCES blog “New Study on U.S. Eighth-Grade Students’ Computer Literacy.”

 

By Amy Rathbun, AIR, and Stephen Provasnik, NCES

 


[1] The ICILS average is the average of all participating education systems meeting international technical standards, with each education system weighted equally. The United States did not meet the guidelines for a sample participation rate of 85 percent, so it is not included in the international average.

 

Reference

Fraillon, J., Ainley, J., Schulz, W., Friedman, T., and Duckworth, D. (2019). Preparing for Life in a Digital World: IEA International Computer and Information Literacy Study 2018 International Report. Amsterdam: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement.

Understanding School Lunch Eligibility in the Common Core of Data

Every year in the Common Core of Data (CCD), NCES releases data on the number of students eligible for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) meal program that provides nutritionally balanced low-cost or free meals to children during the school day. The program was established under the National School Lunch Act, signed into law by President Harry Truman in 1946, and currently serves nearly 30 million children.

This post highlights substantial changes to the NSLP and related changes in CCD reporting and provides guidance on how to use the NSLP data.

Free or Reduced-Price Lunch vs. Direct Certification

Historically, student eligibility for free or reduced-price lunch (FRPL) was determined through individual students submitting school meals application forms within school districts. In 1986, the USDA introduced a direct certification option to reduce participation barriers in the school meal program. Under direct certification, any child belonging to a household that participates in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), or (in some states) Medicaid—as well as children who are migrant, homeless, in foster care, or in Head Start—are categorically eligible to receive free meals at school.

The NSLP data included in CCD releases include school-level FRPL and direct certification eligibility counts for all public schools with students enrolled. These point-in-time counts are taken on or around October 1 of each school year and reported by the states based on the following guidance: 

  • FRPL-Eligible Students
    • Free lunch students: those eligible to participate in the Free Lunch Program (i.e., those with family incomes below 130 percent of the poverty level or who are directly certified)
    • Reduced-price lunch students: those eligible to participate in the Reduced-Price Lunch Program (i.e., those with family incomes between 130 and 185 percent of the poverty level)
    • Free and reduced-price lunch student: the total of free lunch students and reduced-price lunch students
  • Direct Certification
    • The number of students reported as categorically eligible to receive free meals to the USDA for the FNS 742. Students are categorically eligible to receive free meals if they belong to a household receiving the selected federal benefits noted above or are migrant, homeless, in foster care, or in Head Start.

The count of students eligible for free lunch includes students directly certified plus any students who qualified for free lunch by completing a school meals application. As such, the number of students reported as directly certified should always be less than or equal to the number of free lunch students.

Note that changes in SNAP (both legislated eligibility requirements and temporary changes such as national disasters) can have implications for reported NSLP eligibility as well.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010

In 2010, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) established national nutrition standards for food served and sold in schools and made changes to the NSLP to increase food access. These changes also impacted the NSLP data published through CCD:

  • While direct certification had been an option since 1986, HHFKA mandated that states directly certify NSLP eligibility for at least 95 percent of SNAP participants. With the mandated use of direct certification, several states stopped reporting FRPL eligibility entirely. 
  • HHFKA introduced the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) to expand access to free meals to all students in low-income areas. Schools qualifying under CEP no longer count students who qualify for reduced-price lunch since all students are provided a free lunch. CEP schools may report all students as eligible for free lunch regardless of economic status, since all students are provided a free lunch.

Guidance for Data Users

The NSLP eligibility data published through CCD are often used by researchers as a proxy measure for the number of students living in poverty. However, there are limitations to the usefulness of these data that researchers should consider when using NSLP data.

The NSLP data published through CCD has changed over time. CCD published just FRPL counts through SY 2015–16. Starting in SY 2016–17, states can report FRPL and/or direct certification eligibility counts for each school, and CCD publishes both FRPL and direct certification, as reported by the states.[1]

When creating state and national estimates (including tables in the Digest of Education Statistics), NCES uses FRPL counts when they are available. If FRPL data are not available, direct certification data is used as a proxy. For this type of analysis, NCES includes all schools for which both student enrollment data and FRPL or direct certification were reported. States that only reported direct certification are footnoted. NCES recommends that data users be mindful of the reporting differences when analyzing or drawing conclusions with these data.

The NSLP data meet a variety of critical analysis needs to help policy makers, researchers, and the public target resources and answer policy questions. CCD is the only source of nationwide school-level NSLP data. Explore NSLP data as well as all of the other CCD data elements available either by using the CCD data query tool or by downloading data files directly.

 

By Beth Sinclair, AEM, and Chen-Su Chen, NCES

 


[1] In SY 2018–19, states reported FRPL counts for 95 percent of schools. Five states/jurisdictions reported solely the number of direct certification students (Delaware, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and American Samoa). The remaining states/jurisdictions were split: about half reported solely the number of FRPL students for each school and the other half reported both FRPL and direct certification for each school (or FRPL for some schools and direct certification for others).

Why Do Parents Choose Schools for Their Children?

Have you ever wondered why parents choose a specific school for their child? New data from the Parent and Family Involvement (PFI) Survey of the National Household Education Surveys (NHES) program allow us to identify the factors that parents of K–12 students rate as “very important” when choosing a school. In the 2018–19 school year, 36 percent of students had parents who indicated that they had considered multiple schools for their child. Among these students, 79 percent had parents who indicated that the quality of teachers, principals, or other school staff was very important (figure 1). Other factors that a majority of students’ parents indicated as being very important include safety (including student discipline) (71 percent) and curriculum focus or unique academic programs (e.g., language immersion, STEM focus) (59 percent).


Figure 1. Among K–12 students whose parents considered multiple schools, percentage whose parents indicated that selected factors were “very important” when choosing child’s school, by school type: 2018–19

SOURCE: Hanson, R., and Pugliese, C. (2020). Parent and Family Involvement in Education: 2019 (NCES 2020-076). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.


Although parents of students attending different types of schools (i.e., public assigned schools, public chosen schools, private religious schools, or private nonreligious schools) rated most factors for choosing a school similarly, some differences were observed. For example, higher percentages of students in private nonreligious schools than of students in all other kinds of schools had parents who indicated that the following factors were very important when choosing a school:

  • Quality of teachers, principals, or other school staff (92 percent) (figure 1)
  • Curriculum focus or unique academic programs (74 percent) (figure 1)
  • Number of students in class (58 percent) (figure 2)

In addition, a higher percentage of students in private nonreligious schools (42 percent) than of students in public schools (30 percent for public assigned schools and 31 percent for public chosen schools) had parents who indicated that student body characteristics were very important when choosing a school (figure 2). Conversely, a lower percentage of students in private nonreligious schools (14 percent) than of students in any other school type (ranging from 22 to 29 percent) had parents who rated cost as very important.


Figure 2. Among K–12 students whose parents considered multiple schools, percentage whose parents indicated that selected factors were “very important” when choosing child’s school, by school type: 2018–19

SOURCE: Hanson, R., and Pugliese, C. (2020). Parent and Family Involvement in Education: 2019 (NCES 2020-076). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.


Thirty percent of students in public assigned schools had parents who reported that they had considered other schools for their child. What did parents of students in public assigned schools value more than other parents (figure 3)?

  • Extracurricular options (including before- and after-school programs): 31 percent of parents of students in public assigned schools indicated that this factor was very important, compared with 25 percent in public chosen schools and 24 percent in private religious schools.
  • Special facilities (e.g., gymnasium, planetarium, library): 26 percent of parents of students in public assigned schools indicated that this factor was very important, compared with 20 percent in public chosen schools and 15 percent in private religious schools.
  • Quality or availability of special education (including services for students with disabilities): 25 percent of parents of students in public assigned schools indicated that this factor was very important, compared with 13 percent in private religious schools and 17 percent in private nonreligious schools.

Figure 3. Among K–12 students whose parents considered multiple schools, percentage whose parents indicated that selected factors were “very important” when choosing child’s school, by school type: 2018–19

SOURCE: Hanson, R., and Pugliese, C. (2020). Parent and Family Involvement in Education: 2019 (NCES 2020-076). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.


On the other hand, a lower percentage of students in public assigned schools had parents who indicated that the quality of teachers, principals, or other school staff was very important (77 percent) than did students in any other type of school (82 percent of students in public chosen schools, 84 percent of students in private religious schools, and 92 percent of students in private nonreligious schools) (figure 1).

Only 38 percent of students in private religious schools had parents who indicated that the religious orientation of the school was very important when choosing a school (figure 4). Likewise, only a quarter of students overall had parents who indicated that convenience of location was very important when choosing a school.


Figure 4. Among K–12 students whose parents considered multiple schools, percentage whose parents indicated that selected factors were “very important” when choosing child’s school, by school type: 2018–19

SOURCE: Hanson, R., and Pugliese, C. (2020). Parent and Family Involvement in Education: 2019 (NCES 2020-076). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.


More details about the characteristics and factors that play a role in school choice, as well as additional statistics on family involvement in schools, are available in the recent NCES release Parent and Family Involvement in Education: 2019.

 

By Sarah Grady, NCES