The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) is an international comparative study that measures 4th-grade reading performance every 5 years. PIRLS provides valuable information on the reading literacy of students in the United States and how their reading performance compares to that of students in other parts of the world. The study also surveys students’ attitudes toward reading and their reading habits. In addition, students’ principals answer questions about students’ school experiences. The United States has participated in every administration of PIRLS since its inception in 2001. A total of 65 education systems participated in the 2021 PIRLS assessment.

This web report presents descriptive data from PIRLS 2021 on school operations during COVID-19, student reading performance and attitudes, and school reading resources.

The TIMSS 2019 U.S. public-use data files and documentation include the following at grades 4 and 8: student, teacher, and school data in ASCII text format; SPSS and SAS control files for reading the ASCII data to produce SPSS and SAS data files; codebooks; illustrative merging code; a Read Me file; and a Quick Guide. Also included for each of the grades are the analogous files for the Bridge study, which was conducted to form a link between eTIMSS countries’ computer-based data in 2019 and their paper-based data in 2015 as well as to the paper-based TIMSS countries in 2019. Additionally, analogous eTIMSS with PSI files include the data files for eTIMSS that contain additional data for the students that were administered problem-solving inquiry tasks (PSIs).

The TIMSS 2019 U.S. public-use student, teacher, and school data files include U.S. specific variables that are not part of the U.S. data files in the IEA’s TIMSS 2019 international database. They are add-on files that do not contain weight variables or replicate weights, and therefore must be merged with the U.S. data files in the IEA’s public-use international database before any analysis can be conducted. The U.S. data files in the IEA’s public-use international database can be downloaded at https://timss2019.org/international-database/. Users of this data should consult the U.S. Technical Report and User Guide for the 2019 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) available for viewing and downloading at https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2022049.

The National Indian Education Study (NIES) is a special study funded by the Office of Indian Education (OIE). The study includes oversampling of American Indian / Alaska Native (AI/AN) students in public schools and Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) Schools. The study design includes students taking the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) operational assessment followed by a short survey questionnaire specific to AI/AN students about the role of AI/AN culture in students' lives and school experiences. Additionally, for teachers of the sampled AI/AN students there are surveys that collect information about teachers' backgrounds and instructional practices as they relate to the education of AI/AN students. (Note there also is a school administrator survey, however those data are unrelated to this data product.)

For both the student and teacher surveys, all of the questions were multiple choice, but a space was provided at the end of the survey for respondents to write in comments. There are two such write-in questions for each of the student and teacher surveys. The responses for these write-in questions are the purpose of this data product.