• CD-ROM: School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) 2000 Public-Use Data Files, User's Manual, and Detailed Data Documentation
• Data File: CCD Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey: School Year 2002–03
• Data File: CCD Local Education Agency Universe Survey: School Year 2002–03
• Data File: School District Finance Survey: FY 2001
• Data File: CCD State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary/Secondary Education: School Year 2002–03
• Data File: CCD National Public Education Financial Survey: Fiscal Year 2002
• Data File, Public Use: Public Libraries Survey: Fiscal Year 2002
• Data File: State Library Agencies Survey: Fiscal Year 2002
• 1999–2000 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) CD-ROM: Public-Use Data With Electronic Codebook

• Crime and Safety in America's Public Schools: Selected Findings From the School Survey on Crime and Safety
• Education Longitudinal Study of 2002: Base-Year Data File User's Manual
• Forum Guide to Protecting the Privacy of Student Information: State and Local Education Agencies
• Handbooks Online
• Paying for College: Changes Between 1990 and 2000 for Full-Time Dependent Undergraduates
• The Condition of Education 2004 in Brief
• Pocket Projections of Education Statistics to 2013

• Training
• The AERA Grants Program
• The NAEP Secondary Analysis Grant Program
• AIR Grants Program
• NPEC/AIR Focused Grants

This CD-ROM contains the data and documentation for the School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS), sponsored by NCES and conducted in the spring and summer of 2000. SSOCS:2000 is a survey of principals or school disciplinarians regarding the frequency of violence in schools, the nature of the school environment, and the characteristics of school violence prevention programs. Such national data are critical to knowing the true frequency of problems in schools.

This CD-ROM contains the raw, public-use data from SSOCS:2000, along with a user’s manual and detailed data documentation. The data are provided in SAS, SPSS, STATA, and ASCII formats. The user’s manual and detailed data documentation are provided as PDF files.

Part of the NCES Common Core of Data (CCD), the "Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey" has two primary purposes: (1) to provide a complete listing of all public elementary and secondary schools located in the 50 states, District of Columbia, and five outlying areas, or operated by the Department of Defense or Bureau of Indian Affairs; and (2) to provide basic information and descriptive statistics on all schools, their students, and their teachers. Data are provided annually by state education agencies (SEAs) from their administrative records. The 2002–03 data set contains 99,635 records, one for each of the listed schools.

The following information is included for each school: NCES and state school ID numbers; name of the agency that operates the school; name, address, and phone number of the school; school type (regular, special education, vocational education, or alternative); operational status (open, closed, new, added, or changed agency); locale code; latitude and longitude; full-time-equivalent classroom teacher count; low/high grade span offered; school level; Title I and schoolwide Title I eligibility status; magnet school and charter school status (yes or no); free lunch-eligible, reduced-price lunch-eligible, and total free and reduced-price lunch-eligible students; migrant students enrolled in previous year; student totals and detail (by grade, race/ethnicity, and gender); and pupil/teacher ratio.

The data can be downloaded from the NCES Electronic Catalog either in SAS files or in flat files that can be used with other statistical processing programs, such as SPSS. Documentation is provided in separate files.

Part of the NCES Common Core of Data (CCD), the "Local Education Agency Universe Survey" provides (1) a complete listing of every education agency in the United States responsible for providing free public elementary/secondary instruction or education support services; and (2) basic information about all education agencies and the students for whose education the agencies are responsible. Most of the agencies listed are school districts or other local education agencies (LEAs). Data are provided annually by state education agencies (SEAs) from their administrative records. The 2002–03 data set contains 17,761 records, one for each public elementary/secondary education agency in the 50 states, District of Columbia, five outlying areas, Department of Defense, and Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The following information is included for each listed agency: NCES and state agency ID numbers; agency name, address, and phone number; location address; agency type code; supervisory union number; FIPS county code; county name; CSA code; CBSA code; metropolitan/micropolitan code; metropolitan status code; district locale code; operational status code; low/high grade span offered; agency charter school code; number of schools; number of FTE teachers; number of ungraded students; number of PK–12 students; number of migrant students served in special programs; number of special education-IEP students; number of English language learner students; instructional staff fields; support staff fields; number of diploma recipients (by race/ethnicity and gender); number of other high school completers (by race/ethnicity and gender); and imputation flags. Dropout counts (by grade, race/ethnicity, and gender) are published separately from the rest of the agency universe data.

The data can be downloaded from the NCES Electronic Catalog either in SAS files or in flat files that can be used with other statistical processing programs, such as SPSS. Documentation is provided in separate files.

The Common Core of Data (CCD) "School District Finance Survey (Form F–33)" provides finance data for all local education agencies (LEAs) that provide free public elementary and secondary education in the United States. The 2000–01 "School District Finance Survey: Fiscal Year 2001" contains 16,213 records representing public elementary and secondary education agencies in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

For each state or jurisdiction, the data file includes revenues by source (local, state, and federal), current operation expenditures (elementary/secondary education instructional programs), capital outlay expenditures (e.g., construction and instructional equipment), other expenditures by LEAs (e.g., total salaries and wages), state payments on behalf of LEAs (employee benefits), long- and short-term debt, cash and investments held at the end of the fiscal year, total enrollment as of October 1, 2000, and special processing items.

The data can be downloaded from the NCES Electronic Catalog either as an Excel file or as a flat file that can be used with statistical processing programs, such as SPSS or SAS. Documentation is provided in separate files.

The "State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary/Secondary Education" is part of the Common Core of Data (CCD) collection of surveys. This survey provides public elementary and secondary student, staff, and graduate counts for the 50 states, District of Columbia, five outlying areas, Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, and U.S. Department of Defense dependents (domestic and overseas) schools. The data are provided annually by state education agencies (SEAs) from their administrative records. The 2002–03 data set contains 59 records, one for each reporting state or jurisdiction.

For each state or jurisdiction, the data file includes the following information: name, address, and phone number of the SEA; number of teachers, by level; number of other staff, by occupational category; number of students, by grade and ungraded, as well as by race/ethnicity (five racial/ethnic categories); and number of high school completers (for school year 2001–02), by type of completion (diploma, high school equivalency, or other completion) and by race/ethnicity.

The data can be downloaded from the NCES Electronic Catalog either as an Excel file or as a flat file that can be used with statistical processing programs such as SPSS or SAS. Documentation is provided in separate files.

The Common Core of Data (CCD) "National Public Education Financial Survey" (NPEFS) provides detailed state-level data on public elementary and secondary education finances. Financial data are audited at the end of each fiscal year and then submitted to NCES by the state education agencies (SEAs) from their administrative records. This file provides data for fiscal year 2002 (school year 2001–2002). The data set contains 55 records, one for each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and four of the outlying areas (American Samoa, the Northern Marianas, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands). (Guam did not report any data.)

For each state or jurisdiction, the data file includes revenues by source (local, intermediate, state, and federal); local revenues by type (e.g., local property taxes); current expenditures by function (instruction, support, and noninstruction) and by object (e.g., teacher salaries or food service supplies); capital expenditures (e.g., school construction and instructional equipment); average number of students in daily attendance; and total number of students enrolled.

The data can be downloaded from the NCES Electronic Catalog either as an Excel file or as a flat file that can be used with statistical processing programs, such as SPSS or SAS. Documentation is provided in separate files.

The Public Libraries Survey (PLS) is conducted annually by NCES through the Federal-State Cooperative System (FSCS) for Public Library Data. The data are collected by a network of state data coordinators appointed by the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA). For fiscal year (FY) 2002, the PLS includes data from 9,141 public libraries in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the outlying area of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Three database files were generated from the FY 2002 PLS: the Public Library Data File, the Public Library State Summary/State Characteristics Data File, and the Public Library Outlet Data File. The files include data on population of legal service area, service outlets, public service hours, library materials, total circulation, circulation of children’s materials, reference transactions, library visits, children’s program attendance, interlibrary loans, electronic services and information, full-time-equivalent staff, operating income and expenditures, and capital outlay.

The data and related documentation can be downloaded from the NCES Electronic Catalog in Microsoft Access or ASCII (flat file) formats.

The State Library Agencies (StLA) Survey is conducted annually by NCES as a cooperative effort with the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA), the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS), and the U.S. Census Bureau. The StLA Survey provides state and federal policymakers, researchers, and other interested users with descriptive information about state library agencies in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The StLA Survey for fiscal year 2002, the ninth in the series, collected data on 436 items, including state library agency identification, governance, public service hours, service outlets, collections, library service transactions, library development transactions, services to other libraries in the state, allied operations, staff, income, expenditures, and electronic services and information.

The StLA Survey file is available in both Microsoft Access and ASCII formats. The data and related documentation can be downloaded from the NCES Electronic Catalog.

The public-use version of the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) has four main surveys: the School Questionnaire, Teacher Questionnaire, Principal Questionnaire, and School District Questionnaire. These questionnaires were administered to all sectors of schools: traditional public, private, public charter, and Bureau of Indian Affairs/tribal schools. The public-use version of the data only contains information on traditional public and private schools and their principals and teachers, because the identity of any person linked to a school in the sample (in this case, the principals and teachers in public charter schools and Bureau of Indian Affairs/tribal schools) cannot be disclosed, per authorizing legislation for NCES. Responses of some teachers and principals in traditional public and private schools, as well as some of the characteristics that could be used to identify specific schools, may have been altered to prevent the disclosure of the identity of those teachers and principals or schools. Public school district characteristics cannot be linked to principal, school, or teacher data, although the associated school district policies are included on each public school record.

SASS collects information on the following topics: teacher recruitment and retirement policies, teacher and administrator characteristics, school programs, general conditions in schools, principals’ and teachers’ perceptions of school climate and problems in their schools, teacher compensation, district hiring practices, and basic characteristics of the student population.

The public-use files provide data at the national and regional levels for analysis of both traditional public and private schools. Additionally, such characteristics as community type, school size, or type of private school are available. State-level data on traditional public schools or detailed association data for private schools can only be analyzed with the restricted-use version.

The public-use electronic codebook included in the CD-ROM contains the weighted and unweighted count of responses for each data item in each data file included with the public-use version. This codebook supplements the electronic codebook on the SASS CD-ROM by using the exact text and response categories of the questionnaire items and allowing for multiple ways to access the data to produce an output file for statistical analysis. Copies of the questionnaires are contained as PDF files on the CD-ROM in the "Documentation" directory or can be browsed or downloaded from http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/SASS/question9900.asp.

This brief report presents analyses of the 2000 School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS), a nationally representative sample of public elementary and secondary schools. Principals were asked about school crime and violence, disorder, disciplinary actions, violence prevention programs, teacher and parent involvement in prevention efforts, crime and safety practice, crisis management plans, and barriers to school safety. SSOCS collects a wide variety of information, and this report provides national estimates on the major topics.

Steven J. Ingels, Daniel J. Pratt, James E. Rogers, Peter H. Siegel, and Ellen S. Stutts

This data file user's manual documents the procedures and methodologies employed during the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002) base year. The manual is designed to provide guidance and documentation for users of the public-use data. Included in the manual are the following: an overview of the study and its predecessor studies; an account of instrumentation (both the assessment battery and the various questionnaires); documentation of the sample design, weighting, design effects, and analyses of data quality; a summary of data collection methodology and results, including detailed response rates; a description of data preparation and processing activities; and an overview of the data file structure and contents. In addition, there are a number of appendixes.

The Forum Guide to Protecting the Privacy of Student Information gives a general overview of privacy laws and professional practices that apply to the information collected for, and kept in, student records. The book is not intended to give an authoritative interpretation of any law or policy. Instead, it provides background on the key principles and concepts in student privacy, summarizes federal privacy laws and any recent changes to them, and suggests good data management practices for schools, districts, and state education agencies.

Handbooks Online is a searchable web tool that provides access to the NCES data handbooks for elementary, secondary, and early childhood education. These handbooks offer guidance on consistency in data definitions and in maintaining data so that they can be accurately aggregated and analyzed. The database includes data elements for students, staff, and education institutions.

This examination of undergraduate financial aid was originally published as a special analysis in the 2004 edition of The Condition of Education, a congressionally mandated NCES annual report. Republished separately in this booklet, the analysis examines changes in undergraduate student aid between 1989–90 and 1999–2000, focusing on dependent students who were enrolled full time for the full academic year.

Andrea Livingston and John Wirt (editors)

The 2004 edition of The Condition of Education, a congressionally mandated NCES annual report, presents 38 indicators of the status and progress of education in the United States. The Condition of Education 2004 in Brief is a convenient reference brochure that contains a summary of 19 of the 38 indicators from the full-length report, including both graphics and descriptive text.

Topics covered in The Condition of Education 2004 in Brief include trends in full- and half-day kindergarten enrollments; the concentration of enrollment by race/ethnicity and poverty; students' gains in reading and mathematics achievement through third grade; trends in student achievement from the National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading, writing, and mathematics; the percentage of youth neither enrolled nor working; event dropout rates; degrees earned by women; and financial aid awarded to students by postsecondary institutions. The data presented are from many sources, both government and private.

Each year, NCES publishes this pocket summary of the Projections of Education Statistics. The pocket summary provides the reader with key information extracted from the full report. Included are data on actual and projected enrollment at all levels, numbers of high school graduates, and earned degrees conferred for postsecondary institutions. This year's edition of Pocket Projections includes 1990–91 institution data as well as estimates for 2001–02 and projections for 2012–13.

This winter, NCES will sponsor a 3-day advanced studies seminar on the use of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) database. The ECLS-B is designed to support research on a wide range of topics pertaining to young children’s cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development and their health status across multiple contexts (e.g., home and child care).

This seminar is open to advanced graduate students and faculty members from colleges and universities nationwide, and to researchers, education practitioners, and policy analysts from federal, state, and local education and human services agencies and professional associations. It will be held January 10–13, 2005, in Washington, DC.

Advanced studies seminars are designed for researchers in academic communities and other research communities (e.g., federal agencies, research organizations, and think tanks that are interested in quantitative studies). Each multiday seminar is held in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area and covers several topics, including the nature and content of the database, computer software for accessing and analyzing the data, and funding opportunities. Seminar activities include lectures, illustrations, demonstrations, and hands-on practice. At the end of each seminar, participants are expected to make a brief presentation describing their analyses and findings.

Jointly funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), NCES, and the Institute of Education Sciences, this training and research program is administered by the American Educational Research Association (AERA). The program has four major elements: a research grants program, a dissertation grants program, a fellows program, and a training institute. The program is intended to enhance the capability of the U.S. research community to use large-scale data sets, specifically those of the NSF and NCES, to conduct studies that are relevant to educational policy and practice, and to strengthen communications between the educational research community and government staff.

Applications for this program may be submitted at any time. The application review board meets three times per year. The following are examples of grants recently awarded under the program:

Research Grants

• Marigee Bacolod, University of California, Irvine—Equalizing Educational Opportunities: Who Teaches and Where They Choose to Teach
  
• Thomas Dee, Swarthmore College—A Teacher Like Me: Does Race, Ethnicity or Gender Matter?
  
• David Figlio, University of Florida—Inside the "Black Box": School Responses to Accountability Pressure
  
• Janet Holt, Northern Illinois University—Racial and Gender Gaps in Math and Science Educational and Occupational Persistence: Exploring Critical Transitions Using Growth Mixture Modeling
  
• John Logan, University at Albany, SUNY—Brown v. Board of Education at 50: Desegregation Orders and Public School Integration
  
• Sean Reardon, Pennsylvania State University—Understanding the Growth of Achievement Inequality in the Early Years of Schooling
  
• Joanne Roberts, Wellesley College—The Influence of Early Care and Education on Children Outcomes and Family Functioning: An Ecological Model
  
• Salvatore Saporito, College of William and Mary—Private Choices, Public Consequences: A Study of Racial and Economic Segregation in 50 School Districts
  
• James Williams, George Washington University—Socio-economic Status and the Effects of School Size on Student Performance: A Cross- National Multi-Level Analysis of PISA
  

Dissertation Grants

• Emily Beller, University of California, Berkeley—Explaining the Relationships Between Family Structure and Children's Educational Outcomes: Conceptual and Measurement Issues
  
• Katerina Bodovski, Pennsylvania State University—Instruction, Behavior, and Mathematics Learning in Elementary School
  
• Jacob Cheadle, Pennsylvania State University—Early Childhood Academic Achievement and the Family Environment: A Unified Methodological Approach using "GLAMMs" via MCMC
• Allison Gruner, Harvard University—Inclusion: What Is the Impact on Students Without Disabilities?
  
• Amy Langenkamp, University of Texas, Austin—The Effect of School Transitions on Math/Science Academic Achievement: Curriculum, Social Relationships, and School Context
  
• Kimberly Lowry, University of Central Florida—The Paths to Becoming a Mathematics Teacher
  
• Michelle Reininger, Stanford University—Do Community Colleges Increase the Supply of Teachers in Areas With Difficult-to-Staff Schools?
  
• Karen Ross, University of Michigan—Competition Versus Equity: The Effect of School Choice on Segregation in Michigan Public Schools
  

The NAEP Secondary Analysis Grant Program was developed to encourage education researchers to conduct secondary analysis studies using data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the NAEP High School Transcript Studies. This program is open to all public or private organizations and consortia of organizations. The program is typically announced annually, in the late fall, in the Federal Register. Grants awarded under this program run from 12 to 18 months and awards range from $15,000 to $100,000. The following grants were awarded for fiscal year 2004:

• Motoko Akiba, University of Missouri—State Policy, Multicultural Teacher Education, and Student Learning
  
• Albert Beaton, Boston College—Analysis of the Fit of NAEP Scales for Specified Subpopulations
  
• Randy Bennett, Educational Testing Service—Toward Theoretically Meaningful Automated Essay Scoring
  
• Laura Desimone, Vanderbilt University—State Policy and Trends in Student Achievement: The Relationship Between Changes in State Standards-Based Reform Policy and Student Achievement
  
• Xin Ma, University of Kentucky—Understanding the Relationship Between Mathematics and Science Coursework With NAEP Data
• Lynn Stokes, Southern Methodist University—Use of Sampling Weights in Hierarchical Models Fit to NAEP Data
  
• John Warren, University of Minnesota—High School Exit Examinations and NAEP Long-Term Trends in Reading, Mathematics and Science: 1970–C2004
  

The Association for Institutional Research (AIR), with support from NCES and the National Science Foundation (NSF), has developed a grants program titled Improving Institutional Research in Postsecondary Educational Institutions. The goals of this program are to provide professional development opportunities to doctoral students, institutional researchers, educators, and administrators, and to foster the use of federal databases for institutional research in postsecondary education. The program has the following four major components:

• dissertation research fellowships for doctoral students;
  
• research grants for institutional researchers and faculty;
  
• a Summer Data Policy Institute in the Washington, DC, area to study the national databases of NSF and NCES; and
  
• a senior fellowship program.
  

Calls for proposals go out in spring, and proposals are normally accepted through June 30 for work starting no later than September 1 of each year. Following are grants awarded for fiscal year 2004:

• Consuelo Arbona and Amaury Nora, University of Houston—Predicting College Attainment of Hispanic Students: Individual, Institutional, and Environmental Factors
  
• Kathryn Corder, Tracey Pattok, and Kevin Corder, Western Michigan University—College Financing and College Completion: Using Ecological Inference to Investigate How Types of Aid Received Affect Retention and Graduation Outcomes
  
• Wei-Cheng Mau, Randy Ellsworth, and Donna Hawley, Wichita State University—Finding Leakage in the Pipeline of Teacher Supply: Factors Influencing Youngsters to Aspire to and Stay in Teaching Careers
  
• Kevin Murphy, University of Massachusetts, Boston—Factors Affecting the Retention, Persistence, and Attainment of Undergraduate Students at Public Urban Four-Year Higher Education Institutions
  
• Ann Person, Northwestern University—Institutional Characteristics and Student Success in Sub-Baccalaureate Education
  
• Marvin Titus, North Carolina State University—Examining the Private Benefit of Graduate Education: A Two-Stage Approach
  
• Robert Toutkoushian, Indiana University—Using NSOPF:99 to Examine the Effects of Gender, Race, and Family Status on the Careers of Faculty
  
• Kjersten Bunker Whittington, Stanford University—Employment Sectors as Opportunity Structures: The Effects of Location on Male and Female Scientific Dissemination
  

The National Postsecondary Education Cooperative (NPEC) and the Association for Institutional Research (AIR) are pleased to announce the inaugural year of a focused grant program that will fund research and studies to increase understanding and knowledge in a specific issue area that has been identified by the NPEC Executive Committee as critically important to the postsecondary education community. This year the focus is on student success. Proposals are due January 15 of each year and the grant award period is June 1, 2004, through May 31, 2005.

In 2004, NPEC and AIR made seven 1-year grant awards ranging up to $15,000 for dissertation work and up to $30,000 for other activities. Grant recipients will make a presentation of their work at NPEC's national conference in 2006. Travel to the conference will be paid by NPEC.

Following are grants awarded for fiscal year 2004:

• Amy Caison, North Carolina State University—Analysis of Institutionally Specific Retention Research Methods: A Comparison Between Survey and Institutional Database Approaches
  
• Lora Cohen-Vogel, Florida State University—Allocating College Financial Aid on the Basis of Merit: Program Impact on Student Success in Terms of Whether and Where to Attend College
  
• James Cole and David Bergin, University of Missouri, Columbia—Association Between Motivation and General Education Standardized Test Scores
  
• Susan Kahn and Sharon Hamilton, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis—Enhancing Student Success Through Electronic Portfolios
  
• Fernando Lozano, University of California—High School Leadership Skills, Language Proficiency, and the Educational Attainment of Hispanic Students
  
• Josipa Roksa, New York University—States, Schools, and Students: Contextualizing Community College Outcomes
  
• Audrey Alforque Thomas, Harvard University—The Effect of the Immigrant Family Experience on College Application and Attendance