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The NCES Education Demographic and Geographic Estimates (EDGE) program designs and develops information resources to help understand the social and spatial context of education in the United States. It uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to create custom indicators of social, economic, and housing conditions for school-age children and their parents. It also uses spatial data collected by NCES and the Census Bureau to create geographic locale indicators, school point locations, school district boundaries, and other types of data to support spatial analysis.
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Comparable Wage Index for Teachers (CWIFT)

The Comparable Wage Index for Teachers (CWIFT) is an experimental index developed by EDGE to facilitate comparison of educational expenditures. The CWIFT is a measure of the systematic, regional variations in the wages and salaries of college graduates by reported occupational category. It can be used by researchers to adjust school district-level finance data in order to make comparisons across geographic areas. The CWIFT is based on data from the American Community Survey (ACS), a continuous household survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The ACS provides information about the earnings, age, occupation, industry, and other demographic characteristics for millions of U.S. workers. The CWIFT measures wage and salary differences for college graduates, using an analysis that is modeled after the baseline analysis used to construct the original CWI released by NCES in 2006.

ACS Comparable Wage Index for Teachers (464 KB)

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Data

Comparable Wage Index for Teachers (CWIFT) (202 KB)

User Notes

The Census Bureau did not release official ACS 1-year estimates for 2020 due to data collection and quality concerns resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the 2021 CWIFT index relied on the three most recent years of ACS 1-year estimates available at the time of production (2018, 2019, 2021).

The Census Bureau did not release official ACS 1-year estimates for 2020 due to data collection and quality concerns resulting from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The CWIFT index relies on the three most recent years of ACS 1-year estimates, which continued to be 2019, 2018, and 2017 (CWIFT 2019) at the time when 2020 program resources were available.

Data

Comparable Wage Index for Teachers (CWIFT) (203 KB)

User Notes

The ACS survey questionnaire adjusted the wording and response ranges of its 'weeks worked' questions between 2018 and 2019 to improve clarity. The CWIFT continued to rely on the 2018 ranges to provide backward compatibility. For more information about this change see the ACS comparison guidance for Employment and Work Status (https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/guidance/comparing-acs-data/2019.html).

Data

Comparable Wage Index for Teachers (CWIFT) (203 KB)

User Notes

Some occupation and industry codes were altered in 2018 and 2019 to accommodate changes in ACS coding and to ensure that codes would be applied uniformly for each data year. In cases where two codes were combined in 2018, the previous codes were altered to reflect the new code. In cases where a single prior code was split into multiple codes, the new codes were combined to match the old code. For example, in 2018 the ACS split prior code 8190 (people working in hospitals) into codes 8191 and 8192 to identify specific types of hospital settings. These new codes were recoded to 8190 for the 2018 and 2019 models. In cases where the code was changed without combining with another code, the newer code was used for all cases.

Data

Comparable Wage Index for Teachers (CWIFT) (205 KB)

User Notes

The Census Bureau’s School District Boundary Review program shifted from a biennial to an annual boundary collection beginning with the 2017-2018 academic year. As a result, the 2017 CWIFT LEA file relies on 2017-2018 boundaries.

Data

Comparable Wage Index for Teachers (CWIFT) (205 KB)

User Notes

Additional information about issues impacting the American Community Survey, including design, collection, production, and data release are available from the ACS technical documentation.