Appendix A.5. National Education Association

Estimates of School Statistics

The National Education Association (NEA) produces Estimates of School Statistics annually. This report provides projections of public school enrollment, employment and personnel compensation, and finances, as reported by individual state departments of education. The state-level data in Estimates of School Statistics allow broad assessments of trends in the above areas. These data should be looked at with the understanding that the state-level data do not necessarily reflect the varying conditions within a state on education issues.

Data in this report are provided by state and District of Columbia departments of education and by other, mostly governmental, sources. Surveys are sent to the departments of education requesting estimated data for the current year and revisions to 4 years of historical data, as necessary. Twice a year, NEA submits current-year estimates on more than 35 education statistics to state departments of education for verification or revision. The estimates are generated using regression analyses and are used in the Estimates report only if the states do not provide current data.

Further information on Estimates of School Statistics may be obtained from

NEA Rankings & Estimates Team—NEA Research
1201 16th Street NW
Washington, DC 20036
http://www.nea.org

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Status of the American Public School Teacher

The Status of the American Public School Teacher Survey is conducted every 5 years by the National Education Association (NEA). The survey was designed by the NEA Research Division and was initially administered in 1956. The intent of the survey is to solicit information covering various aspects of public school teachers' professional, family, and civic lives.

In the 2005–06 survey, questionnaires were sent to about 2,970 public school teachers in the United States, and about 1,330 of these teachers returned completed questionnaires. Of these 1,330 questionnaires, 330 were deemed unusable, yielding 1,000 usable completed questionnaires out of an adjusted total sample of 2,640. The response rate, then, was 37.8 percent.

Possible sources of nonsampling errors are nonresponses, misinterpretation, and—when comparing data over years—changes in the sampling method and instrument. Misinterpretation of the survey items should be minimal, as the sample responding is not from the general population, but one knowledgeable about the area of concern. The sampling procedure changed after 1956 and some wording of items has changed over different administrations of the survey.

Since sampling is used, sampling variability is inherent in the data. An approximation to the standard error for estimating the population percentages is 1.6 percent. Approximations for significance for other comparisons appear in appendix table A-4. To estimate the 95 percent confidence interval for population percentages, the standard error of 1.6 percent is multiplied by 2 (1.6 x 2). The resulting percentage (3.2) is added and subtracted from the population estimate to establish upper and lower bounds for the confidence interval.

Further information on the Status of the American Public School Teacher Survey may be obtained from

National Education Association—Research Department
1201 16th Street NW
Washington, DC 20036
http://www.nea.org