Introduction

The Common Core of Data (CCD) is an annual universe collection of public elementary and secondary education data that is administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and its data collection agent, the U.S. Census Bureau. Data for the CCD surveys are provided by state education agencies (SEAs). This report presents findings on the numbers of public school students, staff, and high school completers in the United States and other jurisdictions¹ in school year 2005–06,² using data from the State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary/Secondary Education of the CCD survey system.

The State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary/Secondary Education presents counts of students by grade and by grade and race/ethnicity. It also presents the numbers of students who received a high school diploma or other high school completion credential during the previous school year. The survey also presents counts of full-time-equivalent (FTE)³ teachers, aides, support staff, and administrators in public schools and school districts.

SEAs participate in the CCD voluntarily, following standard definitions for the data items they report. In some cases, SEAs may be unable to report a data item, or may not be able to report a data item in exact accordance with a CCD definition. When states were unable to report key data items, values for these items were collected from alternate sources, imputed, or adjusted. Missing data were imported from a public website for the Bureau of Indian Education in the 2005–06 CCD. Please see Appendix A: Methodology and Technical Notes in this report for a detailed discussion of collections from alternate sources, imputations, and adjustments.

While tables include data for all of the CCD respondents, the discussion in the text is limited to the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

More information about the survey content and methodology can be found in Appendix A: Methodology and Technical Notes, of this report. The data items are defined in Appendix B: Common Core of Data Glossary.

More information about the CCD surveys and products is available at http://nces.ed.gov/ccd.

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¹ The CCD includes the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Department of Defense dependents schools (domestic and overseas), the Bureau of Indian Education, Puerto Rico, and the four other jurisdictions of American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
² High school completion data are for the 2004–05 school year. In the CCD, data on high school completers are collected 1 year after the completions occur; for example, data on 2004–05 high school completers were collected in the 2005–06 data collection.
³ Full-time equivalent (FTE) is the amount of time required to perform an assignment stated as a proportion of a full-time position.

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