AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY (ACS)

The Census Bureau introduced the American Community Survey (ACS) in 1996. Fully implemented in 2005, it provides a large monthly sample of demographic, socioeconomic, and housing data comparable in content to the Long Form of the Decennial Census. Aggregated over time, these data will serve as a replacement for the Long Form of the Decennial Census. The survey includes questions mandated by federal law, federal regulations, and court decisions.

Beginning in 2005, the survey has been mailed to approximately 250,000 addresses in the United States and Puerto Rico each month, or about 2.5 percent of the population annually. A larger proportion of addresses in small governmental units (e.g., American Indian reservations, small counties, and towns) receive the survey. The monthly sample size is designed to approximate the ratio used in Census 2000, requiring more intensive distribution in these areas.

National-level data from ACS are available starting with the year 2000. Under the current timetable, annual results were or will be available for areas with populations of 65,000 or more beginning in the summer of 2006, for areas with populations of 20,000 or more in the summer of 2008, and for all areas—down to the census tract level—by the summer of 2010. This schedule is based on the time it will take to collect data from a sample size large enough to produce accurate results for different size geographic units.

Indicator 7 uses data from the ACS for the years 2000–06. For further details on the survey, see http://www.census.gov/acs/www/.

COMMON CORE OF DATA (CCD)

The NCES Common Core of Data (CCD), the Department of Education’s primary database on public elementary and secondary education in the United States, is a comprehensive annual, national statistical database of information concerning all public elementary and secondary schools (approximately 94,000) and school districts (approximately 17,000). The CCD consists of five surveys that state education departments complete annually from their administrative records. The database includes a general description of schools and school districts; data on students and staff, including demographics; and fiscal data, including revenues and current expenditures.

Indicators 3, 21, 29, 30, 33, 34, 35, 36, and 37 use data from the CCD. Further information about the database is available at http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/.

EARLY CHILDHOOD LONGITUDINAL STUDY, BIRTH COHORT

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) is designed to provide detailed information on children’s development, health, and early learning experiences in the years leading up to entry into school. The ECLS-B is the first nationally representative study within the United States to directly assess children’s early mental and physical development, the quality of their early care and education settings, and the contributions of their fathers, as well as their mothers, to their lives. The children participating in the ECLS-B are followed from birth through kindergarten entry. To date, information has been collected from children and their parents during three rounds of data collection: rounds were conducted when the children were about 9 months old (2001), about 2 years old (2003), and about preschool age, or about 4 years old (2005). Data were collected on a nationally representative sample of 14,000 children born in the year 2001. Their experiences are representative of the experiences of the approximately 4 million children born in the United States in 2001.

Children, their parents, their child care providers, their teachers, and their school administrators provide information on children’s cognitive, social, emotional and physical development across multiple settings (e.g., home, child care, school). At all waves of data collection (9 months, 2 years, preschool, and kindergarten), parents are asked about themselves, their families, and their children; fathers are asked about themselves and their roles in their children’s lives; and children are observed and participate in assessment activities. In addition, when the children are 2 years old and in preschool (about 4 years old), early care and education providers are asked to provide information about their own experience and training and the setting’s learning environment. When the ECLS-B children are in kindergarten, teachers are also asked to provide information about the children’s early learning and the school and classroom environments. Trained assessors visit children in their homes. With the parent’s permission, children participate in activities designed to measure important developmental skills in the cognitive, language, social, emotional, and physical domains. Trained assessors also conduct a computer-assisted interview with the sampled child’s primary caregiver, most frequently the mother.

With the permission of the child’s parents, individuals and organizations who provide regular care for the child are interviewed. Trained staff conduct a computer-assisted interview over the phone. For home-based care settings, the primary provider is interviewed about the care setting and the sampled child’s experiences there. For center-based care programs, the center director is first interviewed for general information about the program; the sampled child’s primary provider in the center is then interviewed about the group care environment and the child’s experiences. Child care settings were subsampled then observed and rated.

Child’s Primary Type Of Nonparental Early Care and Education

Parents were asked if they currently had regular early care and education arrangements for their child, and, if so, were then asked how many hours per week their child spent in that setting. This composite measure presents information on the type of nonparental care and education in which the child spent the most hours, which is identified as the primary care arrangement. The composite was created by reviewing the number of hours the child spent in each arrangement and identifying the one where the child spent the most hours. If a child spent equal time in each of two or more types of arrangements, care was coded as “multiple care arrangements.” Children with no regular nonparental care arrangements were coded as “no child care.” For this presentation of primary care, Head Start refers to services received at a public or private school, religious center, or private home, as reported by the parent. “Regular” refers to arrangements that occurred on a routine schedule (i.e., occurring at least weekly or on some other schedule), not including occasional babysitting or “back-up” arrangements.

INTEGRATED POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION DATA SYSTEM (IPEDS)

The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) is the core program that NCES uses for collecting data on postsecondary education. (Before IPEDS, some of the same information was collected by the Higher Education General Information Survey [HEGIS].) Indicators 9, 11, and 42 use data from HEGIS. IPEDS is a single, comprehensive system that encompasses all identified institutions whose primary purpose is to provide postsecondary education.

IPEDS consists of institution-level data that can be used to describe trends in postsecondary education at the institution, state, and/or national levels. For example, researchers can use IPEDS to analyze information on (1) enrollments of undergraduates, first-time freshmen, and graduate and first-professional students by race/ethnicity and sex; (2) institutional revenue and expenditure patterns by source of income and type of expense; (3) salaries of full-time instructional faculty by academic rank and tenure status; (4) completions (awards) by type of program, level of award, race/ethnicity, and sex; (5) characteristics of postsecondary institutions, including tuition, room and board charges, calendar systems, and so on; (6) status of postsecondary vocational education programs; and (7) other issues of interest.

Participation in IPEDS was a requirement for the 6,700 institutions that participated in Title IV federal student financial aid programs such as Pell Grants or Stafford Loans during the 2006–07 academic year. Title IV institutions include traditional colleges and universities, 2-year institutions, and for-profit degree- and non-degree-granting institutions (such as schools of cosmetology), among others. Each of these three categories is further disaggregated by control (public, private not-for-profit, and private for-profit), resulting in nine institutional categories, or sectors. In addition, 84 administrative offices (central and system offices) listed in the IPEDS universe were expected to provide minimal data through a shortened version of the Institutional Characteristics component. Four of the U.S. service academies are included in the IPEDS universe as if they were Title IV institutions. Institutions that do not participate in Title IV programs may participate in the IPEDS data collection on a voluntary basis.

IPEDS data for 1999 were imputed using alternative procedures. See NCES 2008-022, Guide to Sources, for more information.

Indicators 9, 11, 26, 27, 39, 40, and 42 use data from IPEDS. The institutional categories used in the surveys are described in supplemental note 9. Further information about IPEDS is available at http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/.

PRIVATE SCHOOL UNIVERSE SURVEY (PSS)

The Private School Universe Survey (PSS) was established in 1988 to ensure that private school data dating back to 1890 would be collected on a more regular basis. With the help of the Census Bureau, the PSS is conducted biennially to provide the total number of private schools, students, and teachers, and to build a universe of private schools in the 50 states and the District of Columbia to serve as a sampling frame of private schools for NCES sample surveys.

In the most recent PSS data collection, conducted in 2005–06, the survey was sent to 31,848 qualified private schools, and it had a response rate of 94.3 percent.

Indicator 4 uses data from the PSS. Further information on the survey is available at http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pss/.

SCHOOL SURVEY ON CRIME AND SAFETY (SSOCS)

The School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) focuses on incidents of specific crimes and offenses and a variety of specific discipline issues in public schools. SSOCS was administered in the spring of the 1999–2000, 2003–04, and 2005–06 school years. The survey also covers characteristics of school policies, school violence prevention programs and policies, and school characteristics that have been associated with school crime. The survey was conducted with a nationally representative sample of regular public primary, middle, high, and combined schools in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

In the 2005–06 school year, a total of 3,565 schools were selected for the study. In March 2006, questionnaires were mailed to school principals, who were asked to complete the survey or to have it completed by the person most knowledgeable about discipline issues at the school. “At school” was defined for respondents to include activities that happen in school buildings, on school grounds, on school buses, and at places that hold school-sponsored events or activities. Respondents were instructed to provide information on the total number of recorded incidents and the number of incidents reported to the police or other law enforcement. Respondents were instructed to provide information on the number of incidents, not the number of victims or offenders, regardless of whether any disciplinary action was taken or whether students or nonstudents were involved. In the questions pertaining to indicator 28, respondents were instructed to record incidents occurring before, during, or after normal school hours. Due to changes to questionnaire items between survey iterations, data may be unavailable for some survey years. A total of 2,724 schools completed the survey. For more information about the SSOCS, visit http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/ssocs/.

SCHOOLS AND STAFFING SURVEY (SASS)

The Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) is the nation’s largest sample survey of America’s elementary and secondary schools. First conducted in 1987–88, SASS periodically surveys the following:

• surveys public schools and collects data on school districts, schools, principals, teachers, and library media centers;


• surveys private schools and collects data on schools, principals, teachers, and library media centers;


• surveys schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and collects data on schools, principals, teachers, and library media centers; and


• surveys public charter schools and collects data on schools, principals, teachers, and library media centers.

To ensure that the samples contain sufficient numbers for estimates, SASS uses a stratified probability sample design. Public and private schools are oversampled into groups based on certain characteristics. After the schools are stratified and sampled, the teachers within the schools are stratified and sampled based on their characteristics. For the 2003–04 SASS, a sample of public charter schools was included in the sample as part of the public school questionnaire.

Indicators 31 and 32 use data from the SASS. Further information about the survey is available at http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/.