2012 National Board for Education Sciences Annual Report
Briefing Material for Board Members

NCES Activities and Products

Elementary and Secondary Surveys

• The Common Core of Data (CCD) – CCD is the Department of Education's source for official statistics on fiscal and nonfiscal aspects of public elementary and secondary education in the United States. CCD is a comprehensive, annual, national statistical database of all public elementary and secondary schools and school districts, which contains data that are designed to be comparable across all states. CCD contains three categories of information: general descriptive information on schools and school districts, data on students and staff, and fiscal data. CCD is based on statistical information that is collected annually from approximately 100,000 public elementary and secondary schools and approximately 18,000 public school districts (including supervisory unions and regional education service agencies) in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Department of Defense Schools, and the outlying areas.
• Private School Survey (PSS) – PSS is a short survey that is completed by administrative personnel in private schools. Information collected includes: religious orientation; level of school; size of school; length of school year, length of school day; total enrollment (K-12); number of high school graduates, whether a school is single-sexed or coeducational and enrollment by sex; number of teachers employed; program emphasis; existence and type of kindergarten program.
• The Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) – SASS collects data on teacher demand and shortage, teacher and administrator characteristics, teacher compensation, district hiring practices, principals' and teachers' perceptions of school climate and problems in their schools, school programs, general conditions in schools and basic characteristics of the student population. SASS has four core components: the School Questionnaire, the Teacher Questionnaire, the Principal Questionnaire, and the School District Questionnaire, (renamed from the Teacher Demand and Shortage Questionnaire). The related Teacher Follow-up Study (TFS) is used to determine how many teachers remained at the same school, moved to another school, or left the profession in the year following the SASS administration. Similarly, the Principal Follow-up Study (PFS) provides attrition rates in the year following SASS for principals in K-12 schools and measures the percentage who retired or sought work in another occupational field among those who left the principalship.
• High School Longitudinal Studies – Once a decade since the 1970’s NCES has conducted a longitudinal study of students in America’s high schools. The current study is the High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS); earlier studies include the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS), the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS), the High School and Beyond Study (HS&B), and the National Longitudinal Study (NLS). While the starting grade and emphasis has changed over time, these studies are designed to monitor the transition of a national sample of young people as they progressed through high school and on to postsecondary education and/or the world of work. These studies include surveys of students, their parents, math and science teachers, school administrators. Data are also collected from the high school transcripts of the sampled students. By surveying the same young people over time, it is possible to record the changes taking place in their lives and help to understand the associations between earlier achievements, aspirations, experiences, and these changes.
• Fast Response Survey System (FRSS) – FRSS collects issue-oriented data quickly with minimum response burden. The FRSS, whose surveys collect and report nationally representative data on key education issues at the elementary and secondary levels, was designed to meet the data needs of Department of Education analysts, policy planners, and decision makers when information could not be collected quickly through NCES’s large recurring surveys. Findings from FRSS surveys have been included in congressional reports, testimony to congressional subcommittees, reports for other agencies, NCES reports, and other Department of Education reports. The findings are also often used by state and local education officials.
• National Household Education Survey – NHES provides descriptive data on the educational activities of the U.S. population and offers researchers, educators, and policymakers a variety of statistics on the condition of education in the United States. The NHES surveys have covered learning at all ages, early childhood to school age through adulthood. NHES was redesigned beginning in 2008 to address potential issues with data quality. With the NHES redesign, the study was shifted from one using primarily telephone interviews to one based primarily on self-administered mailed forms. The 2007 and 2012 data collections both consist of two surveys: Parent and Family Involvement in Education (PFI) of children in kindergarten through grade 12 and School Readiness (SR) of children from birth through age 6 and not yet in kindergarten. Prior to 2007, NHES had several other modules that would rotate into the collection every few years including adult education and before-and-after school programs for students in grades K-8. The NHES includes surveys on adult education, parent and family involvement in education, before- and after-school programs and activities, civic involvement, early childhood program participation, household library use, school readiness, and school safety and discipline.
• School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey – SCS is a supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) that collects information from students ages 12 through 18 about victimization, crime, and safety at school. SCS asks about school-related topics such as alcohol and drug availability; fighting, bullying, and hate-related behaviors; fear and avoidance behaviors; gun and weapon carrying; and gangs at school.
• Current Population Survey (CPS) October Supplement – CPS is a monthly household survey conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics to provide information about employment, unemployment, and other characteristics of the civilian non-institutionalized population. The October Supplement routinely gathers data on school enrollment and educational attainment for elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education. Related data are also collected about preschooling and the general adult population. In addition, NCES funds additional items on education-related topics such as language proficiency, disabilities, computer use and access, student mobility, and private school tuition. NCES has funded a supplement for the Current Population Survey since the late 1960s.