2. The Teacher Compensation Survey—Overview

The Teacher Compensation Survey (TCS) is conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a center of the Institute of Education Sciences within the U.S. Department of Education. NCES is authorized to collect education statistics data by Congress through the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002, section 151(b)(3), 20 U.S.C. 9541. The Governments Division of the U.S. Census Bureau collected the TCS data on behalf of NCES.

The TCS is part of the NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) survey system. The CCD collects administrative records data and has nonfiscal and fiscal components. The nonfiscal components are the State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary/Secondary Education, the Local Education Agency (LEA) Universe Survey, and the Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey; the fiscal components are the School District Finance Survey (F-33), the National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS), and the TCS (which includes both fiscal and nonfiscal data). CCD surveys are universe surveys, and the CCD data are reported annually by state education agencies (SEAs) through the efforts of state CCD coordinators.

The TCS collected individual teacher-level data for SY 2006–07 from the administrative records of 17 states that volunteered to participate: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. The TCS universe file for SY 2006–07 contains 1.4 million records encompassing 1.1 million full-time-equivalent (FTE)² teachers and represents 33 percent of the 3.2 million FTE teachers in the United States (Sable and Noel 2008). The TCS will be considered a research and development effort until at least 45 states participate in the collection. Participation in the TCS is voluntary. The long-term goal is to expand the TCS into a national survey.

Three data files based on the data collected by the TCS are produced for each survey administration: an individual teacher-level restricted-use data (RUD) file, a school-level public-use file, and an LEA-level public-use file. The RUD file is only available to researchers who have received a restricted-use data license from NCES. Applications for a restricted-use data license must be made online. For more information about applying for a restricted-use data license, please visit the NCES website.

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