Table of Contents  |  Search Technical Documentation  |  References

NAEP Sample Design → NAEP 2003 Sample Design → 2003 State Assessment Sample Design → New-School Sampling Frame for the 2003 State Assessment → New-School District Sampling

NAEP Technical DocumentationNew-School District Sampling

The CCD file used for the sampling frame corresponds to the 2000–2001 school year, whereas the assessment year is the 2002–2003 school year. In this two-year period, there were schools that closed, schools that changed status (one school becoming two schools for example), and schools that came into existence. Schools identified as closed were classified as out-of-scope. Schools that changed status were handled on a case-by-case basis.

The goal was to allow every new school a chance of selection, thereby fully covering the target population of schools in operation in the 2002–2003 school year. The first step in this process was the development of a new-school frame. The first step in developing a new-school frame was the construction of a district-level file from the CCD school-level file. The district-level file was divided into a “small”-districts file and a “medium- and large”-districts file that were used for this purpose.

Small districts contained, at most, three schools on the CCD school frame and no more than one fourth-, one eighth-, and one twelfth-grade school. New schools in small districts were identified during school recruitment and added to the sample if the old school was sampled. From a sampling perspective, the new school was viewed as an “annex” to the sampled school that had a well-defined probability of selection equal to that of the old school. The “frame” in this case was, in fact, the original frame; when the old school was sampled in a small district, the new school was automatically sampled as well.

The remaining districts were defined as “large and medium" districts. In these districts, a frame of new schools was developed based on information provided by the district. To limit the required effort, the new-school frame was created through developing information on a sample of medium- and large-public school districts in each jurisdiction. All districts were selected in the following classes of districts:

• jurisdictions where all schools were sampled with certainty (so that all new schools would be selected with certainty as well),

• very large districts with more than 6,000 fourth-grade students and 105 fourth-grade schools,

• state-operated districts, and

• districts in states with less than 10 districts.

The remaining districts in each jurisdiction (excepting the "take-all" jurisdictions) were separated into two strata of large and medium districts. These strata were defined by computing an aggregate percentage of enrollment for each district within the state (removing districts in the certainty strata defined above), and sorting in descending order by percentage enrollment. All districts up to and including the first district at or above the 80th cumulative percentage were defined as large districts. The remaining districts were defined as medium districts.

An example is given below. A state's districts are ordered by percentage enrollment. The first six become large districts and the last six become medium districts.

Large and medium districts example, showing percent enrollment and stratum, by district: 2003

District	Percent enrollment	Cumulative percent enrollment	Stratum
District 1	20	20	Large
District 2		40
District 3	15	55
District 4	10	65
District 5		75
District 6		85
District 7	5	90	Medium
District 8	2	92
District 9		94
District 10		96
District 11		98
District 12		100
NOTE: Stratum indicators "Large" and "Medium" in the table refer to the large and medium districts as defined in the paragraph above the table. SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2003.

The target sample sizes for each jurisdiction were 10 districts all together. Eight districts were sampled in California, Florida, Maryland, and Texas, and nine districts in Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin. The smaller targets are due to the presence of certainty districts in these states. Up to eight districts were sampled in the large district stratum. If there were eight or more large districts in the stratum, eight large districts and two medium districts were sampled. If there were fewer than eight large districts in the stratum, all of the large districts were sampled, and then sampled a total of 10 minus the number of large districts (so that the full sample across both strata was 10.) “Eight” and “ten” are replaced with “six” and “eight” in California, Florida, Maryland, and Texas, and with “seven” and “nine” in Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin. In the example above, all six large districts and four of the medium districts were selected for the new-school inquiry.

If sampling was needed in the medium stratum (i.e., it was not a take-all circumstance), the medium districts were selected with equal probability. If sampling was needed in the large stratum, the large districts were sampled with probability proportional to enrollment. These probabilities were retained and used in all later sampling and weighting, as the district probability then represents the number of other districts which were not sampled to be canvassed for new schools.

The selected districts in each jurisdiction were then sent a listing of all their schools that appeared on the file, and were asked to provide information about the new schools not included in the file. These listings, provided by the selected districts, were used as sampling frames for selection of new public schools. This process was conducted through the NAEP State Coordinator in each jurisdiction. The coordinators were sent the information for all sampled districts in their respective states, and were responsible for returning the completed updates.

The eligibility of a school was determined based on the grade span.  A school was also classified as “new” if a change of grade span occurred such that the school status changed from ineligible to eligible. The average grade enrollment for these schools was set to the average grade enrollment before the grade-span change. The schools found eligible for sampling due to the grade-span change were added to the new-school selection frame.

Printer-friendly Version