Welcome to the TALIS 2013 Results

On June 25, 2014, the OECD released the TALIS 2013 Report entitled TALIS 2013 Results: An International Perspective on Teaching and Learning, which is available here. The United States was one of 34 countries and subnational entities to participate in TALIS 2013.

Because U.S. response rates did not meet international technical standards for TALIS, all estimates for the United States are shown separately from other participating education systems and are not included in the international averages. Please read more about the U.S. response rate, the steps being taken to determine the level of bias that may be present in the estimates, and caveats about the U.S. data estimates below.

Special Note on the U.S. TALIS 2013 Results

The Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) was based on scientifically drawn samples of schools and teachers designed to be representative of each country’s teachers of ISCED Level 2 students. Developed by UNESCO, ISCED stands for the International Standard Classification of Education and is used by countries to map education levels across countries and education systems. In the United States, these are teachers of students in grades 7 through 9 (here labeled lower secondary education for convenience).

All teachers in public and private schools that serve students in any of grades 7, 8, or 9 were eligible to participate in the survey, as well as the principals of the schools in which these teachers work. However, teachers that taught in schools that exclusively served students with special needs, those that taught exclusively adults, occasional or emergency teachers, or teachers who were on long-term leave and were not expected to return to teaching at the time of data collection were not included in the sample. Teachers of special education students in regular public schools were included in the sample.

Data standards set by the TALIS Board of Participating Countries to ensure valid and reliable comparisons across education systems required each system to have valid responses from at least 50 percent of original schools and at least 75 percent of all sampled schools (both original and substitute schools). In addition, at least 50 percent of sampled teachers within each school had to respond to the questionnaire in order for the school to count toward the overall response rate. The U.S. response rate in 2013 was 37 percent of original schools (before substitution; weighted) and 61 percent after substitution (weighted). Based on the international standards, the United States did not achieve an acceptable level of response, the only country of 34 participating education systems to be so designated. As allowed under the international technical standards, the TALIS Board of Participating Countries agreed that the U.S. response rate and quality of collected data were nonetheless of sufficiently high quality to report based, in part, on an initial nonresponse bias analysis conducted by NCES and submitted to the OECD for consideration. However, because of the low U.S. response rate, the U.S. data are

• shown separately from the other participating education systems that achieved acceptable response rates,
• not included in international averages, and
• not included in any of the indices created for and reported in the international TALIS database available from the OECD and reported in the OECD’s TALIS 2013 report.

The following tables are a subset of those published in the OECD’s TALIS 2013 report. These data tables have been reviewed by NCES and are being presented here to provide interested readers with a preview of the kinds of data available for secondary analysis. However, readers and data users are

• cautioned that the U.S. TALIS 2013 data may require confirmation of the estimates using other data sources, such as the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), when possible,
• urged to take note of the potential for bias in estimates using the U.S. TALIS data file with the included weights when conducting complex statistical techniques, and
• encouraged to make it clear in all analyses and presentations of TALIS data that the United States did not meet the international participation rate standards.