NCES Blog

As the primary statistical agency of the U.S. Department of Education, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is mandated to report complete statistics on the condition of American education. While the condition of an education system is often assessed through indicators of achievement and attainment, NCES is also mandated to report on the conditions of the education workplace.

As such, NCES has reported timely information from schools. For example, this past December, NCES released data that indicated that public schools have experienced difficulty filling positions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.¹ In order to understand the broader labor situation, NCES is utilizing the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey to describe the tightness of the job market.

JOLTS Design

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), provides monthly estimates of job openings, hires, and total separations. The purpose of JOLTS data is to serve as demand-side indicators of labor shortages at the national level.²

The JOLTS program reports labor demand and turnover estimates by industry, including education.³ As such, this analysis focuses on the public state and local education industry (“state and local government education” as referred to by JOLTS),⁴ which includes all persons employed by public elementary and secondary school systems and postsecondary institutions.

The JOLTS program does not produce estimates by Standard Occupational Classification.⁵ When reviewing these findings, please note occupations⁶ within the public state and local education industry vary⁷ (e.g., teachers and instructional aides, administrators, cafeteria workers, transportation workers). Furthermore, as the JOLTS data are tabulated at the industry level, the estimates are inclusive of the elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education levels.

Analysis

In this blog post, we present selected estimates on the number and rate of job openings, hires, and total separations (quits, layoffs and discharges, and other separations). The job openings rate is computed by dividing the number of job openings by the sum of employment and job openings. All other metric rates (hires, total separations, quits, layoffs and discharges, and other separations) are defined by taking the number of each metric and dividing it by employment. Fill rate is defined as the ratio of the number of hires to the number of job openings, and the churn rate is defined as the sum of the rate of hires and the rate of total separations.⁸

Table 1. Number of job openings, hires, and separations and net change in employment in public state and local education, in thousands: January 2020 through January 2023

*Significantly different from January 2023 (p < .05).
¹ Net employment changes are calculated by taking the difference between the number of hires and the number of separations. When the number of hires exceeds the number of separations, employment rises—even if the number of hires is steady or declining. Conversely, when the number of hires is less than the number of separations, employment declines—even if the number of hires is steady or rising.
NOTE: Data are not seasonally adjusted. Detail may not sum to totals because of rounding.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), 2020–2023, based on data downloaded April 5, 2023, from https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/dsrv?jt.

[2] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Retrieved March 28, 2023, from https://www.bls.gov/jlt/jltover.htm.

[3] For more information about these estimates, see https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.tn.htm.

[4] JOLTS refers to this industry as state and local government education, which is designated as ID 92.

[5] For more information on the reliability of JOLTS estimates, see https://www.bls.gov/jlt/jltreliability.htm.

[6] North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) is a system for classifying establishments (individual business locations) by type of economic activity. The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) classifies all occupations for which work is performed for pay or profit. To learn more on the differences between NAICS and SOC, see https://www.census.gov/topics/employment/industry-occupation/about/faq.html.

[7] JOLTS data are establishment based, and there is no distinction between occupations within an industry. If a teacher and a school nurse were hired by an establishment coded as state and local government education, both would fall under that industry. (From email communication with JOLTS staff, April 7, 2023.)

[8] Skopovi, S., Calhoun, P., and Akinyooye, L. Job Openings and Labor Turnover Trends for States in 2020. Beyond the Numbers: Employment & Unemployment, 10(14). Retrieved March 28, 2023, from https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-10/jolts-2020-state-estimates.htm.

The Common Core of Data (CCD) contains basic information on public elementary and secondary schools, local education agencies (LEAs), and state education agencies (SEAs) in the United States. The CCD collects fiscal and nonfiscal data about all public schools, public school districts, and state education agencies in the United States. Both IPEDS and CCD provide a sampling frame to many survey collections, including many conducted by NCES and the Department of Education. This blog post, one in a series of posts about CCD nonfiscal data, focuses on CCD’s two major releases and their corresponding components. For information on how to access and use CCD data, read the blog post Accessing the Common Core of Data (CCD).
 

Data Releases

CCD nonfiscal data are published in two releases every school year—as preliminary files and as provisional data files—within the CCD Data File tool. Understanding the differences between the two releases is important to understand how CCD nonfiscal data are released.

• The preliminary files contain basic information about schools and districts, such as name, address, phone number, status, and NCES ID number. Many schools and districts utilize information from the directory file, such as the NCES ID, to apply for grants or other opportunities for their schools. Therefore, it is important that these files are released first, even if the data are still preliminary. 
   
• The provisional data files are the full release of the CCD nonfiscal data. These data files provide school-, district-, and state-level data on topics like enrollment, staffing, and free or reduced-price lunch. These files are much more detailed and include data that are broken down by characteristics such as grade, race/ethnicity, and gender—as well as by combinations of these characteristics. These files are not updated unless there is a significant change to the data.

Each file release includes a version that indicates the type of release. The first preliminary files have “0a” in the file names, and revised preliminary files include “0b,” “0c,” and so on. The first provisional files have “1a,” in the file names, and revised provisional files include “1b,” “1c,” and so on. Note, however, that releasing revised files is rare.
 

Components of a Release

It is important to utilize the various components that accompany each release to find additional information that is specific to the file and can help you better understand the data. In addition, there are other resources available that provide more ways to access and understand the data.
 

Documentation Components

Every data file will have documentation files that provide information about the data. These include the following:

• release notes—basic information about the data release, including details about any changes to the files, such as a change in a variable’s description or a variable that was added to the file; summary tables that include national totals and tables with selected frequencies are also included.
   
• state data notes—information on data anomalies that are discovered during NCES’s collaboration with the states; broken down by state and by file type, these notes describe things like changes to how data were collected by the state.
   
• companion files—included in each data file component, these files include a list of all the variables in the data file—including a brief description—and frequency tables; you should start with the companion files to better understand what variables are in each data file.

Resources and Tools

Along with the release of the CCD nonfiscal data files, additional resources are also updated to improve access to the data.

• Summary Tables: Released with the provisional data files, Summary Tables provide a national-level look at the data. These tables show the operational status of schools and districts by type as well as the number of schools, students, and teachers by state.
   
• Locators and ElSi: There are two primary tools that can be used to access CCD data: the Locators (School Locator and District Locator) and the Elementary/Secondary Information System (ElSi). These tools are updated as the data files are released. The Locators are updated with each release, while ElSi is updated with the release of the provisional data files. Learn more about these tools.
   
• Online Documentation: The online documentation provides some general information about CCD. This information is not year specific, but it provides a detailed explanation about how the data are collected, processed, and reviewed.

• Reference Library: The reference library includes detailed documentation on various components of the CCD files that applies to multiple years, levels, and components of the data collection. The library includes crosswalks, documentation describing changes to the collection, and guidance for utilizing the data files, such as how to aggregate free or reduced-price lunch data.

Be sure to follow NCES on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube and subscribe to the NCES News Flash to stay up-to-date on future CCD releases and resources.

By Patrick Keaton, NCES

Last month, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) kicked off a major survey of adults (ages 16–74) across the nation to learn about their literacy skills, education, and work experience. Information collected through this survey—officially known as Cycle 2 of the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) in the United States—is used by local, state, and national organizations, government entities, and researchers to learn about adult skills at the state and local levels (explore these data in the PIAAC Skills Map, shown below).

Specifically, these data are used to support educational and training initiatives organized by local and state programs. For example, the Houston Mayor’s Office for Adult Literacy has used the PIAAC Skills Map data in developing the Adult Literacy Blueprint, a comprehensive plan for coordinated citywide change to address the systemic crisis of low literacy and numeracy in the city. In addition, the Kentucky Career and Technical College System developed a comprehensive data-driven app for workforce pipeline planning using the county-level PIAAC Skills Map data as one of the education pipeline indicators.

This is not the first time NCES is administering PIAAC. NCES collected PIAAC data three times between 2011 and 2017, when the first cycle of this international study was administered in 39 countries. Developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), PIAAC measures fundamental cognitive and workplace skills needed for individuals to participate in society and for economies to prosper. Among these fundamental skills are literacy, numeracy, and digital problem-solving. Data from the first cycle of PIAAC (2011–17) provided insights into the relationships between adult skills and various economic, social, and health outcomes—both across the United States as a whole and for specific populations of interest (e.g., adults who are women, immigrants, older, employed, parents, or incarcerated). The OECD and NCES have published extensively using these data.

The current cycle (Cycle 2) of PIAAC will resemble the first cycle in that interviewers will visit people’s homes to ask if they are willing to answer background questionnaire and take a self-administered test of their skills. However, unlike the first cycle when respondents could respond to the survey on paper or on a laptop, this cycle will be conducted entirely on a tablet. PIAAC is completely voluntary, but each respondent is specifically selected to provide invaluable information that will help us learn about the state of adult skills in the country (participants can also receive an incentive payment for completing the survey).

PIAAC’s background questionnaire includes questions about an individual’s demographics, family, education, employment, skill use, and (new in Cycle 2 and unique to the United States) financial literacy. The PIAAC test or “direct assessment” measures literacy, numeracy, and (new in Cycle 2) adaptive problem-solving skills of adults.¹

Each sampled person’s response is not only kept confidential but also “anonymized” before the data are released (so that no one can ever definitively identify an individual from personal characteristics in the datafile).

The international report and data for PIAAC Cycle 2 is scheduled to be released by the OECD in December 2024.

Be sure to follow NCES on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube and subscribe to the NCES News Flash to stay up-to-date on PIAAC report and data releases and resources.

The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) is a comprehensive federal data source that collects information on key features of higher education in the United States, including characteristics of postsecondary institutions, college student enrollment and academic outcomes, and institutions’ employees and finances, among other topics.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has created a new resource page, Student Cohorts and Subgroups in IPEDS, that provides data reporters and users an overview of how IPEDS collects information related to postsecondary students and staff. This blog post highlights key takeaways from the resource page.

IPEDS survey components collect counts of key student and staff subgroups of interest to the higher education community.

Data users—including researchers, policy analysts, and prospective college students—may be interested in particular demographic groups within U.S. higher education. IPEDS captures data on a range of student and staff subgroups, including race/ethnicity, gender, age categories, Federal Pell Grant recipient status, transfer-in status, and part-time enrollment status.

The Outcome Measures (OM) survey component stands out as an example of how IPEDS collects student subgroups that are of interest to the higher education community. Within this survey component, all entering degree/certificate-seeking undergraduates are divided into one of eight subgroups by entering status (i.e., first-time or non-first-time), attendance status (i.e., full-time or part-time), and Pell Grant recipient status.

Although IPEDS is not a student-level data system, many of its survey components collect counts of students and staff by subgroup.

Many IPEDS survey components—such as Admissions, Fall Enrollment, and Human Resources—collect data as counts of individuals (i.e., students or staff) by subgroup (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender) (exhibit 1). Other IPEDS survey components—such as Graduation Rates, Graduation Rates 200%, and Outcome Measures—also include selected student subgroups but monitor cohorts of entering degree/certificate-seeking students over time to document their long-term completion and enrollment outcomes. A cohort is a specific group of students established for tracking purposes. The cohort year is based on the year that a cohort of students begins attending college.

Exhibit 1. IPEDS survey components that collect counts of individuals by subgroup

IPEDS collects student and staff counts by combinations of interacting subgroups.

For survey components that collect student or staff counts, individuals are often reported in disaggregated demographic groups, which allows for more detailed understanding of specific subpopulations. For example, the Fall Enrollment (EF) and 12-month Enrollment (E12) survey components collect total undergraduate enrollment counts disaggregated by all possible combinations of students’ full- or part-time status, gender, degree/certificate-seeking status, and race/ethnicity. Exhibit 2 provides an excerpt of the EF survey component’s primary data collection screen (Part A), in which data reporters provide counts of students who fall within each demographic group indicated by the blank cells.

Exhibit 2. Excerpt of IPEDS Fall Enrollment (EF) survey component data collection screen for full-time undergraduate men: 2022­–23

[click image to enlarge]

NOTE: This exhibit reflects the primary data collection screen (Part A) for the 2022–23 Fall Enrollment (EF) survey component for full-time undergraduate men. This screen is duplicated three more times for undergraduate students, once each for part-time men, full-time women, and part-time women. For survey materials for all 12 IPEDS survey components, including complete data collection forms and detailed reporting instructions, visit the IPEDS Survey Materials website.

As IPEDS does not collect data at the individual student level, these combinations of interacting subgroups are the smallest unit of information available in IPEDS. However, data users may wish to aggregate these smaller subgroups to arrive at larger groups that reflect broader populations of interest.

For example, using the information presented in exhibit 2, a data user could sum all the values highlighted in the green column to arrive at the total enrollment count of full-time, first-time men. As another example, a data user could sum all the values highlighted in the blue row to determine the total enrollment count of full-time Hispanic/Latino men. Note, however, that many IPEDS data products provide precalculated aggregated values (e.g., total undergraduate enrollment), but data are collected at these smaller units of information (i.e., disaggregated subgroup categories).

Student enrollment counts and cohorts align across IPEDS survey components.

There are several instances when student enrollment or cohort counts reported in one survey component should match or very closely mirror those same counts reported in another survey component. For example, the number of first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students in a particular fall term should be consistently reported in the Admissions (ADM) and Fall Enrollment (EF) survey components within the same data collection year (see letter A in exhibit 3).

Exhibit 3. Alignment of enrollment counts and cohorts across IPEDS survey components

For a full explanation of the alignment of student counts and cohorts across IPEDS survey components (letters A to H in exhibit 3), visit the Student Cohorts and Subgroups in IPEDS resource page.

Be sure to follow NCES on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube, follow IPEDS on Twitter, and subscribe to the NCES News Flash to stay up-to-date on IPEDS data releases and resources.

By Katie Hyland and Roman Ruiz, AIR

Happy Get Ready for Kindergarten Month! 

For more than 20 years, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has been collecting information about kindergartners’ knowledge and skills as part of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies (ECLS) program.

The first ECLS, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–99 (ECLS-K), focused on children in kindergarten in the 1998–99 school year. At the time the ECLS-K began, no large national study focused on education had followed a cohort of children from kindergarten entry through the elementary school years. Some of today’s commonly known information about young children, such as the information about kindergartners’ early social and academic skills shown in the infographics below, comes out of the ECLS-K. For example, we all know that children arrive at kindergarten with varied knowledge and skills; the ECLS-K was the first study to show at a national level that this was the case and to provide the statistics to highlight the differences in children’s knowledge and skills by various background factors.

The second ECLS kindergarten cohort study, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010–11 (ECLS-K:2011), is the ECLS-K’s sister study. This study followed the students who were in kindergarten during the 2010–11 school year. The ECLS-K:2011, which began more than a decade after the inception of the ECLS-K, allows for comparisons of children in two nationally representative kindergarten classes experiencing different policy, educational, and demographic environments. For example, significant changes that occurred between the start of the ECLS-K and the start of the ECLS-K:2011 include the passage of No Child Left Behind legislation, a rise in school choice, and an increase in English language learners. 

From the parents of children in the ECLS-K:2011, we learned how much U.S. kindergartners like school, as shown in the following infographic.

The ECLS program studies also provide information on children’s home learning environments and experiences outside of school that may contribute to learning. For example, we learned from the ECLS-K:2011 what types of activities kindergartners were doing with their parents at least once a month (see the infographic below).

What’s next for ECLS data collections on kindergartners? NCES is excited to be getting ready to launch our next ECLS kindergarten cohort study, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2023–24 (ECLS-K:2024). 

Before the ECLS-K:2024 national data collections can occur, the ECLS will conduct a field test—a trial run of the study to test the study instruments and procedures—in the fall of 2022.

If you, your child, or your school are selected for the ECLS-K:2024 field test or national study, please participate! While participation is voluntary, it is important so that the study can provide information that can be used at the local, state, and national levels to guide practice and policies that increase every child’s chance of doing well in school. The ECLS-K:2024 will be particularly meaningful, as it will provide important information about the experiences of children whose early lives were shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Watch this video to learn more about participation in the ECLS-K:2024. For more information on the ECLS studies and the data available on our nation’s kindergartners, see the ECLS homepage, review our online training modules, or email the ECLS study team.

By Jill Carlivati McCarroll, NCES