Accessing And Exploring NCES/Census Data

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has multiple state-of-the-art data tools that allow users to easily access and analyze data. This workshop provides participants with a comprehensive overview of how to utilize those tools to access education data sets. Participants will learn how to access public-use and restricted-use data sets, create reports and data tables, find published reports, and conduct analyses with selected statistical tools.

NCES offers a large variety of national, state, local, school and student data sets including assessment data, cross sectional data, survey data and administrative records. The workshop is designed for graduate students, faculty members, researchers, and individuals with interest in using NCES and/or Census data for their research studies, evaluations, and data projects.

Participants are not required to have any pre-requisite skills to attend the virtual session. Attendees should have access to their personal laptops during the workshop for interactive, in-class activities. Each participant will receive an Accessing and Exploring NCES/Census Data “cookbook,” that provides comprehensive instruction and screen shots explaining how to navigate a myriad of NCES data tools.

The workshop will offer an in-depth instruction on five NCES data tools, including the Elementary/Secondary Information System (ELSI); the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Data Explorer; Educational Demographic and Geographic Estimates (EDGE) data tools to explore ACS and GIS data; the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS); and Data Lab, including PowerStats which allows users to generate custom statistical analyses and data visualizations.

Participants will also be provided with an overview of the NCES website, including data visualizations with revenues, expenditures, and average daily attendance for public elementary and secondary education in the United States; education finance data from the National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS) and the School District Finance Survey (F-33); and new data on financial literacy and college financial planning from the High School and Beyond Longitudinal Survey (HS&B). Staff from the U.S. Census Bureau will also conduct an overview of F-33 data files and documentation available on the Census Bureau website. Finally, the workshop will cover data files and tables available on the NCES and Census Bureau websites, the locations of file documentation and record layouts, and a summary of historical data available for researchers.