Using Federal Statistics to Inform Educational Policy and Practice:
The Role of the National Center for Education Statistics
April 14, 1999
Committee on Health, Education Labor, and Pensions
United States Senate
Washington, DC
By:
Pascal D. Forgione, Jr., Ph.D.
U.S. Commissioner of Education Statistics
National Center for Education Statistics
Office of Educational Research and Improvement
U.S. Department of Education
1900 K Street NW, Suite 9000
Washington DC 20006
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Foreword The primary focus of NCES is to generate and analyze national and international data that allow us to monitor the American education system. When effective practices are identified, our data can tell where they are used and how prevalent they are. Our data can also identify problem areas, which, in turn, can shape future work. In addition, NCES data reveal trends in student achievement, compare our students and our schools to those of other countries, and tell us how widely particular education reforms are practiced. While we assist in determining what works, I would like to make clear that our data are not intended to evaluate the effectiveness of specific educational practices. That is a job that is assigned to other areas of the Department of Education. Executive Summary As Commissioner, I have established four core values to guide NCES’ national data agenda: quality, usefulness, predictability, and timeliness. We recognize that assessment results will be of most use if they are released in a timely fashion. To this end, in 1996, we redesigned the NAEP reporting plan which cut in half the time between data collection and release of the findings. In designing all aspects of its program—from the design of data collections to the dissemination of data and results—NCES is guided by the needs of policymakers and educators. As a result, NCES databases have been at the forefront of efforts aimed at understanding and improving education. The following examples illustrate how NCES data have provided insights that can assist those who are working to improve the education system.
These data sets will have the greatest impact on efforts to improve education if they are used by researchers and by practitioners in the field. The following are a few examples of how NCES actively engages the research community and works to increase the accessibility and usefulness of NCES data sets to practitioners and policymakers.
As you can see from these examples, NCES is committed to its mission of providing technically sound and policy relevant education statistics to Congress, the Administration and to the wider research, policy, and practitioner communities. Introduction NCES' Mission
In short, we provide information to support and strengthen the education system in this country – it is that simple and that complex. NCES has acquired a reputation for trustworthy data and long-range planning that has enabled it to meet its mandate. Our activities are driven by the responsibility to meet the needs of our various audiences, among whom are teachers, policymakers, researchers, the media, the general public, and most certainly you, the legislators. As such, one of our primary goals is to ensure that the data we produce can reliably answer important questions relevant to major decisions of education policy, programs, and practice. Commissioner’s Core Values To be useful, data must be presented in a variety of formats. Our publications and products include reports, books, newsletters, and issue briefs that range in level of detail and scope. In addition, our data sets can be used to generate additional analyses on a wide range of relevant educational issues at the national, state and local levels. They are a unique resource for researchers and policy analysts. The development of the Internet has allowed us to expand our options for presenting data, while simultaneously improving our customer’s ability to access it. In addition to quality and usefulness, another value I have set for myself and for NCES is that we provide data on a predictable basis. This not only increases the usefulness of the data, but also allows people to develop a greater understanding of their meaning and relevance by permitting regular discussion. Key indicators should not come "out of the blue;" rather, the public should be waiting expectantly for them. Finally, NCES strives for timeliness by undertaking its activities and reporting its data with an eye toward addressing key questions of current interest. We know that data are of greatest interest when they reflect the current state of things. We believe that the data and findings that are currently being produced at NCES reflect these four values. Trying to balance all these core values is particularly challenging given our staffing constraints and the explosive growth of our program over the past decade. In FY99, NCES staff consisted of 115 positions, almost 15 percent fewer than ten years ago. During that same period, the program budget has more than tripled, from $31 million to $104 million. Focus on timeliness But we recognize that assessment results will be of most use if they are released in a timely fashion. To this end, in 1996, we redesigned the NAEP reporting plan which cut in half the time between data collection and release of the findings. As shown in figure 1, the most recent NAEP Long Term Trends Report (1996) was produced in less than half the prior production time, and the Reading (1998), Mathematics (1996) and the Science (1996) NAEP Reports were produced in about half the prior production time. Attention to timeliness is not new for NCES. Since 1975, the Fast Response Survey System (FRSS) has collected issue-oriented data quickly and with minimum turn-around times. FRSS was designed to meet the data needs of Department of Education analysts, planners, and decision-makers when information could not be collected quickly through traditional NCES surveys. The average turn-around time from the end of data collection to the release of the report is about seven months, and often less (figure 2). For example, to address the ever-changing technology needs of our classrooms, the FRSS released an Issue Brief on Internet Access in Public Schools and Classrooms two months after the completion of data collection. What we know about American education: the NCES contribution One of the most basic ways in which NCES serves the needs of the education community is by providing authoritative information about student achievement. For 30 years, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has been reporting statistics about the achievement of our nation's students. NAEP long-term trend data were instrumental in pointing out that the achievement gap between white and black students has been narrowing, with the largest declines occurring during the eighties. Little progress has been achieved during the nineties. For almost 10 years, NAEP has also measured achievement for states on a voluntary basis. For example, the recent release of the 1998 NAEP Reading Report Card allowed some three dozen states to compare their academic progress over time and with each other. Forty-three states participated in the most recent Grade 4 Reading State NAEP, and 40 states participated in Grade 8. We are actively working to encourage all 50 states and jurisdictions to participate in 2000. In addition, these data allow for the exploration of whether state policies can help to explain the differences in state mathematics achievement gains over time. One recent analysis suggests that two states with large gains during the period--Texas and North Carolina--pursued similar paths to reform in their school systems. Another important way in which we provide critical information on the academic achievement of U.S. students is through comparisons with students in other countries. NCES, together with the National Science Foundation, provided major support for the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which revealed that the relative international standing of U.S. students declines as they progress through school. By the twelfth grade, even our top math and physics students, defined as the top 10 to 20 percent of students in the United States, can’t keep up with their international peers. While strategies such as more homework and less television may be associated with achievement for individual students and schools, the results indicated that they do not appear to be potent factors in explaining differences in achievement across countries. Those who were hoping that these explanations would account for U.S performance relative to other countries were disappointed by the TIMSS findings. TIMSS data do encourage us, however, to emphasize rigorous content, focused curriculum, and good teaching. For example, topics taught in U.S. eighth grade mathematics classrooms were typically offered at a seventh grade level in other countries. Teacher quality is one of the central areas of concern in current efforts to raise academic standards and reshape curricula. NCES is playing a primary role in attempts to understand what constitutes excellent teaching and to track progress toward improving the quality of classroom instruction. A recent study conducted using the Fast Response Survey System (FRSS), for example, provided a national profile of teacher quality, focusing on teacher training and professional development. Among other findings, this study revealed that teachers typically participated in short professional development activities, lasting the equivalent of a day or less. Teachers who participated in these short activities, however, were much less likely than teachers who participated in more extensive activities to report that the activity improved their teaching. NCES has taken a leadership role in focusing attention on another important aspect of teacher quality - the match between teachers’ training and their teaching assignment. The issue was highlighted in the early nineties with reports from the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) showing the percentage of teachers without a major or minor in their field of teaching. It has been a topic of a number of subsequent analyses and reports using NCES data, as the fit between training and teaching assignment has continued to be a topic of major interest to researchers, educators, and policymakers. The results of NCES studies frequently raise important questions that guide future research. A series of FRSS surveys has shown, for example, that the percentage of public schools having access to the internet has increased dramatically in recent years, from 35 percent in 1994 to 89 percent in 1998, and from 3 percent to 51 percent in classrooms. The study of teacher quality mentioned above, however, found that relatively few teachers (20 percent) reported feeling very well prepared to integrate educational technology into classroom instruction. These results raise several questions concerning how teachers use technology in schools and what kind of training and technical support they receive. Given the rapid pace of technological change, the value of information concerning these and other questions is directly related to its timeliness. NCES has already designed a FRSS survey that will ask teachers directly about the use of technology in the classroom. Unfortunately, over the past few years in the United States, there have been several tragic incidents of violence at schools committed by students. These events received a great deal of attention in the press and caused many to conclude that school violence is on the rise. Naturally, there were debates regarding appropriate policy responses. To help inform these debates, NCES, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Justice, developed an Annual Report on School Safety. The first annual report, which was issued just this past October, provides a comprehensive view of existing data and shows that in general, school crime is declining, serious violent crime is neither increasing nor decreasing, and that the number of students carrying weapons to school is decreasing. |
However, the report also found evidence of a growing gang presence in schools and noted that more students today are fearful in schools than in the past. Because these data provide a detailed picture of the extent and nature of the problem, they allow policymakers to formulate targeted responses to specific aspects of the problem, such as the recently announced Federal initiative aimed at curbing school violence. At the postsecondary level, we know that paying for college is a serious barrier for many of our nation’s families and young people. Federal financial aid—to help them shoulder the burden of these costs—has been a major focus for the Department of Education. NCES data have also been used extensively to examine the affordability of postsecondary education. NCES’ National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) provides crucial data about the affordability of postsecondary education and the extent to which students rely on financial aid to pay the costs. We know from NPSAS that financial aid accounted for a third of the total amount paid by dependent full-time, full-year undergraduates to attend public 4-year institutions in 1995-96. NPSAS data also reveal the extent to which students work while enrolled in postsecondary institutions and the amount of debt students have upon leaving. Longitudinal studies: a look over timeNCES is best known in the research community for its program of longitudinal studies. Findings from these studies have addressed policy issues at the forefront of the education debate, and have even played a role in bringing new issues to the fore. The program began more than 25 years ago, with NLS-72, the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972. Following these young people through the years after high school revealed the dead end nature of the high school General Track, a finding that is taken for granted today. The next longitudinal survey was High School and Beyond—HS&B, which followed students who were high school seniors and sophomores in 1980 and included better representation of private schools than the earlier study. The release of the first set of findings from High School and Beyond about public and private schools generated a national discussion about topics ranging from what courses students take (e.g. academic vs. general) to how principals go about their jobs. The next longitudinal study was the NELS (The National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988), which began by surveying a group of students who were eighth graders in 1988, and has followed them up three times since then, most recently two years after high school graduation. They will be surveyed in 2000 for the last time, eight years after leaving high school. Beginning the survey with eighth graders provided the opportunity to cast a wider net for dropouts than the earlier studies. With declining opportunities for those without a high school credential, the educational impact of dropping out of high school has been a concern of policymakers. NELS data tell us that, by 1994, almost half of the 1988 eighth graders who dropped out of school had received either a diploma or a GED. A major theme in analyses of NELS data has been the importance of taking math and science courses in high school. Gain in math and science scores from eighth to twelfth grades is strongly associated with the number of courses the students take, regardless of student's gender, race/ethnicity, or socioeconomic background. Given the importance of coursetaking, it is also essential to look at how schools can encourage students' progress in the course pipeline. NELS data also led researchers to find that students take more difficult math courses in schools offering fewer low-level courses. These findings provide insights to educators responding to the need to give students a stronger foundation in mathematics. During the eighties, many school reform programs called for high school students to take more rigorous courses. The report, A Nation at Risk, recommended a set of core academic courses for all students, and data from NELS and High School and Beyond show that the percentage of graduates who had taken these courses increased dramatically between 1982 and 1992. Furthermore, the percentage of sophomores whose teachers and counselors advised them to attend college doubled during the time period. Thus, consistent with school reform policies aimed at increasing college participation, a higher percentage of students in 1992 had taken courses designed to prepare them for college and been advised by their teachers and counselors to continue their education beyond high school. Taken together, NLS-72, HS&B and NELS have also taught us much about students’ educational careers in college. Research using these data have confirmed the importance of taking rigorous courses including algebra and geometry, and of high expectations. Studies have shown that these are key factors for college success, and can reduce or even eliminate the impact of socioeconomic status. Another trend confirmed by the longitudinal studies is that increasing percentages of students are taking longer than four years to earn their bachelor’s degrees. Recent policy developments and basic research findings, such as the National Educational Goal on school readiness and NICHD studies on brain development, are generating new demands for longitudinal information about students at a younger age. In response, NCES has instituted the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study program. The program has two parts—ECLS-K, for kindergarten, and ECLS-B, for birth. ECLS-K began collecting data from a representative sample of kindergartners in the fall of 1998 and will follow them through fifth grade, and ECLS-B will select children based on birth certificates and follow them longitudinally through the first grade. These studies will enable us to address questions in four key areas: school readiness, children’s transitions to childcare and school, the relationship between children’s kindergarten experience and early elementary school performance, and children’s growth and development during the early childhood years. Each of these areas is of key interest to education policymakers. Examples of questions this study will allow us to answer include: How do early experiences at home and in other settings affect what students know and can do when they come to school? What experiences are the most influential? What regular care do children receive from someone other than their parents? What problems do children have adjusting to kindergarten and what characterizes children who have problems? What can children do at different ages during the first years of life? We are particularly pleased that a number of other federal agencies are partnering with us in this effort by providing financial and/or staff support. These include the Office of Special Education Programs here in the Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Administration for Children, Youth, and Families, the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the National Institutes of Health, and the National Center for Health Statistics. Their involvement expands the types of questions the ECLS will be able to address and extends its usefulness beyond NCES and its traditional clients. In conclusion, NCES data sets allow policymakers and educators to answer many critical questions about American education as well as identify areas of concern. Here I have only been able to touch on a few of the topics to which the agency’s data speak, but to give you a broader view, I’ve included a summary chart showing all of the agency's data (figure 3). Additional information about each of these surveys can be found on the NCES web site: http://nces.ed.gov. How we work with the education community: NCES’ action agenda NCES recognizes that the research community is crucial at every stage of its work. Researchers play a key role on panels that are set up to work with NCES during the planning for each survey. These panels provide valuable input to insure that questionnaires include topics of interest for research and policy, and that the highest quality standards are maintained. NCES also reaches out to researchers at their professional meetings by displaying materials about available data and answering questions of interested users. And NCES itself is assuming a leadership role in an area that has provided a particular challenge to researchers studying what works in education: understanding and measuring classroom instruction. We all know how complex an environment a classroom is, and how difficult it is to capture interactions between teachers and students using traditional survey questionnaires. The agency is currently supporting a major project to develop new ways to measure and describe instructional practices. In this effort, we have reached out to researchers and university-based efforts are a key component of the work. The effort is in its initial phases, with a team of researchers working to design studies that develop new measures that will assess the depth of content covered and interaction among students and teachers within specific academic subject areas. The overall professional approaches used by teachers for daily decision-making will also be taken into account in the work. Methodologies being explored include computer-based teacher activity logs and coding of classroom artifacts such as student work. This project is being designed to inform NCES surveys planned over the next several years. One main target for the new measures is the planned grade three follow-up of the ECLS-Kindergarten cohort. They could also be used in SASS and NAEP, as well as for international surveys. Ties to educatorsThe work of NCES and researchers using its data will only have an impact on education if it relates to the concerns of practitioners in the field. Through partnerships, NCES works closely with education organizations and its practitioners at the grassroots level to make its products and services more accessible and available. NCES and its partner groups are exploring ways to redesign and implement special projects tailored to the interests and concerns of organization leaders and members. NCES produces a variety of reports, findings, web pages, and other materials covering a wide range of topics of use to local education practitioners -- teachers, administrators, parents, librarians, and counselors. To meet their information needs NCES has launched a local education practitioners-oriented web site. This new web site presents education data in a user-friendly manner and provides links to a wide range of NCES products and other relevant resources. NCES has also established special collaborative relationships with the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), the National School Boards Association (NSBA), and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). For example, NCES has submitted articles for partners’ publications (e.g. "Notes from NCES" in each month's NSBA newsletter), and NCES offers database training to staffs and members. All three partners, in return, provide valuable insight on members’ needs and concerns. NCES also serves the education community by supporting development of technology capacity in the states and localities. The SPEEDE/ExPRESS system, developed in collaboration with the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) and the Sallie Mae Servicing Corporation, allows elementary, secondary and universities to transfer academic records, such as high school and college transcripts, efficiently and reliably. By eliminating or reducing the need for human intervention, SPEEDE/ExPRESS enables the timely receipt and delivery of critical information, improves the accuracy of the information, and reduces operational costs for all education agencies involved. Moreover, the system allows institutions to maintain their local data in any way they choose, while still being able to quickly and efficiently communicate that information to outside organizations. NCES is currently supporting recruitment of new SPEEDE/ExPRESS users, as well as further developments of the system. With the mobility of today’s students, and with increased numbers of students applying to our colleges and universities and transferring from one institution to another, it promises to be a major saver of administrative work. To bring a different perspective to discussions of achievement, curriculum, and instruction, NCES and colleagues in other parts of OERI, developed the TIMSS Resource Kit, which was released ten months after the release of initial TIMSS data. The kit is designed to help state, district and school staff, as well as citizens, use the findings of TIMSS to improve the education we provide our nation’s children. It contains multimedia resources including clear, understandable reports on TIMSS findings, videotapes of classroom teaching, guides for using the information in discussions, and presentation overheads with talking points for speakers. The contents of the kit have been used by thousands of state and local educators to spark learning and stimulate thinking about curriculum/textbooks, assessment, and teaching issues. Current TIMSS results are based on fourth and eighth graders, and students in their final year of high school. This spring, the study will be administered again to eighth graders in the United States and in other countries. In addition to our national sample, 13 states and 14 districts or consortia are capitalizing on the opportunity to administer TIMSS to representative samples of their 8th grade students at the same time as the international study. TIMSS-R Benchmarking will provide these 27 participating states, districts or consortia with information about their students’ mathematics and science achievement in an international context (figure 4). Some of these states and districts include Connecticut, Massachusetts, Texas, Chicago (IL), Montgomery County (MD), Colorado Springs Academy School District #20 (CO), and Southwestern Pennsylvania Math/Science Collaborative (PA), which has produced its own brochure touting its participation in the project. These states and districts are not only interested in benchmarking state and local achievement to TIMSS, but also in using the data to help inform and improve math and science practices at the state and local level. To respond to this interest, NCES--along with colleagues in other parts of OERI and with partners at NSF--led the effort to create a TIMSS-R Benchmarking Network. Supported by the First in the World Consortium, the Network will allow the TIMSS-R states and districts to share information, including technical assistance for analysis of TIMSS-R results, dissemination of best practices among network members and other sites, and the development of strategies for effectively communicating results with their publics. The Web, of course, has tremendously increased the accessibility of NCES findings to practitioners and the public. In addition to the special web page for practitioners that I mentioned earlier, we have just released a new feature to our web site called "Fast Facts". Easy-to-understand statistics as well as detailed tables and data sources are provided for questions such as "How much does the United States spend on higher education?" These questions and answers are continuously updated as new topics are suggested via a simple form on the web site. Since the launch of this web page last week, we have received over 100 submissions of questions. What our customers have to sayAs a federal agency, we must always bear in mind that our role is to serve: we fulfill the needs of our constituency, or our "customers", as we like to call them. Policy makers have always comprised a key part of NCES’ audience, as have educational researchers. Recently, however, we have been expanding our range of customers. We feel strongly that the data we collect and analyze should be useful not only to national - and state-level policy makers and researchers, but also to teachers, parents, school boards, school district superintendents, school principals and anyone else involved in the reform and improvement of learning. Thus, although we serve by fulfilling the needs and requests of our traditional customers, we also serve by actively reaching to provide useful information to our new customers. Of course, to be sure that we are responding to the needs of our customers, we have to ask them. NCES conducted a customer satisfaction survey in 1997 to find out if our customers’ needs were being met and to identify areas for improvement. We asked respondents to tell us about their satisfaction with NCES products and services, and how NCES compares to other organizations, from which they receive education data, so that NCES might benchmark against them. The next survey will be conducted in the spring of 1999. I am gratified that the survey found high levels of satisfaction with NCES publications, data files, and services. Users gave high marks on most aspects of our publications, particularly on the overall quality of reports, comprehensiveness, and clarity of the writing. Most users reported being very satisfied or satisfied with NCES services, such as Internet services, and training seminars or workshops. At the same time, the results indicate areas in which we must improve our performance. Even with high ratings users sent a strong message about the need to improve the timeliness of NCES publications and ease of use of the data files. It is now up to NCES to respond to take further action that will improve the timeliness and usability of its products and services on behalf of our customers. In closing, I would like to reiterate that NCES is committed to providing technically sound and policy relevant statistics about education to Congress, the Administration, and to the wider research, policy, and practitioner communities. |
Figure 1:
Recent Improvements in Turnaround Times for Major NAEP Releases
Content Area and Year of NAEP Data Collection |
Publication Turnaround Time |
Math (grades 4, 8, 12) |
|
· 1992 |
12 months |
· 1996 |
10 months |
Science (grades 4, 8, 12) |
|
· 1990 |
23 months |
· 1996 |
12 months |
Reading (grades 4, 8, 12) |
|
· 1994 |
17 months |
· 1998 |
10 months |
Long Term Trends in Reading, Writing, Math, and Science (ages 9, 13, 17) |
|
· 1994 |
29 months |
· 1996 |
14 months |
Figure 2:
Turnaround Times for Recent Fast Response Survey System (FRSS) Reports
NAME OF REPORT | END OF DATA COLLECTION | REPORT RELEASE DATE | TIME ELAPSED (in months) |
---|---|---|---|
Issue Brief: Internet Access In Public Schools And Classrooms: 1994-98 | Dec-98 | Feb-99 | 2 |
Teacher Quality: A Report On Teacher Preparation And Qualifications Of Public School Teachers | Jun-98 | Jan-99 | 7 |
Violence And Discipline Problems In U.S. Public Schools: 1996-97 | Jul-97 | Mar-98 | 8 |
Issue Brief: Internet Access In Public Schools | Dec-97 | Feb-98 | 2 |
Advanced Telecommunications In U.S. Private Schools, K-12 Fall 1995 | Jan-96 | May-97 | 16 |
Statistics In Brief: Advanced Telecommunications In U.S. Public Elementary And Secondary Schools, Fall 1996 | Nov-96 | Feb-97 | 3 |
Statistics In Brief: Parents And Schools: Partners In Student Learning | Jun-96 | Oct-96 | 4 |
Nutrition Education In Public Elementary And Secondary Schools | Jul-95 | Jul-96 | 12 |
Racial And Ethinic Classifications Used By Public Schools | Jul-95 | May-96 | 10 |
E.D. TABS: Advanced Telecommunications In U.S. Public Elementary And Secondary Schools, 1995 | Dec-95 | Mar-96 | 3 |
Figure 3:
NCES Survey Data by Level of Education for Which Data are Available
ELEMENTARY/SECONDARY | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Data about: | Schools/ Institutions | Districts/ Localities | States | Nation | ||
Students | CCD | CCD SDDB | CCD | CCD, NLS-72, DOVE, SDDB, HS&B, NELS:88, PSS, NAEP, TIMSS, FRSS, NHES, HSTS, IRL, CPS | ||
Teachers/Staff | CCD | CCD | CCD NAEP | CCD, SASS, NAEP, PSS, DOVE, HS&B, NELS:88, SASS, TIMSS, FRSS, B&B | ||
Schools | CCD | CCD | CCD SASS | NAEP, TIMSS, FRSS, CCD, PSS, SASS, HS&B, NELS:88 | ||
Finances | CCD | CCD | CCD | |||
Assessment | NAEP | NAEP, NLS-72, HS&B, NELS:88, TIMSS, IRL | ||||
Private Schools | PSS | PSS | PSS | |||
POSTSECONDARY | ||||||
Data about: | Schools/ Institutions | Districts/ Localities | States | Nation | ||
Students | IPEDS | IPEDS | IPEDS | NPSAS, IPEDS, BPS, DOVE, B&B, NLS-72, HS&B, NELS:88, NHES, CPS, PEQIS | ||
Faculty/Staff | IPEDS | IPEDS | IPEDS | IPEDS, NSOPF, PEQIS | ||
Institutions | IPEDS | IPEDS | IPEDS | IPEDS, PEQIS, NPSAS | ||
Finances | IPEDS | IPEDS | IPEDS | IPEDS | ||
Student Aid | NPSAS, BPS, B&B | |||||
Completions | IPEDS | IPEDS | IPEDS | BPS, B&B, NLS:72, IPEDS, HS&B, NELS:88, SED, CPS, DOVE | ||
LIFELONG LEARNING | ||||||
Data about: | Schools/ Institutions | Districts/ Localities | States | Nation | ||
Adult Education | NHES, NALS, IALS, B&B, CPS | |||||
Libraries | ALS | ALS | PLS | PLS, ALS, NHES | ||
Households | SDDB | SDDB | NHES, NELS:88, SDDB, NALS, IALS, HS&B, CPS |
Figure 3—Legend
ALS | Academic Library Survey |
B&B | Baccalaureate and Beyond |
BPS | Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study |
CCD | Common Core of Data |
CTES | Career/Technical Education Statistics |
FRSS | Fast Response Survey System |
HS&B | High School and Beyond |
HSTS | High School Transcript Study |
IALS | International Adult Literacy Survey |
IPEDS | Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System |
IRL | International Reading Literacy Study |
NAEP | National Assessment of Educational Progress |
NALS | National Adult Literacy Survey |
NELS:88 | National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 |
NHES | National Household Education Survey |
NLS-72 | National Longitudinal Study School Class of 1972 |
NPSAS | National Postsecondary Student Aid Study |
NSOPF | National Study of Postsecondary Faculty |
PEQIS | Postsecondary Education Quick Information System |
PLS | Public Libraries Survey |
PSS | Private School Survey |
SASS | Schools and Staffing Survey |
SDDB | School District Data Book |
SED | Survey of Earned Doctorates |
TIMSS | Third International Mathematics and Science Study |
Figure 4:
TIMSS-R Benchmarking Participants
|
|
Link To:
Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)
National Assessment of Educational Progress