School Pulse Panel: Surveying high-priority, education-related topics

About

The School Pulse Panel (SPP) is NCES's innovative approach to delivering timely information on public K-12 schools in the U.S. Specifically, the SPP are a group of experimental web-based surveys administered monthly to principals. The SPP surveys a sample of public K-12 schools from the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Surveys are also collected and results are reported separately from a census of public K-12 schools in the U.S. outlying areas—American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The SPP survey results are published approximately eleven months per year.

Originally designed to monitor public schools' response to the COVID-19 pandemic, today, the SPP keeps with its original mission as it is designed to deploy quickly and collect data on critical matters in public schools. Data is released in near real-time. Visit Methodology to see past surveys administered by SPP.

The SPP is unique within NCES as a Federal Statistical Rapid Response Survey. Rapid Response Surveys are fielded quickly and frequently. While surveys like the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) produce benchmark statistics critical to monitoring progress over time, they are not designed to capture the rapid pace at which schools adapt to new or emerging challenges. The SPP can be tailored to collect information as data needs arise. By getting data quickly to federal policymakers, stakeholders within the U.S. Department of Education, U.S. public school leaders, and the general public, the SPP is accelerating dissemination of public education information in the U.S.

Data collected from SPP are used to produce estimates that are representative of all U.S. public schools. Estimates from SPP can further be examined at the school level, school size, region, locale (school location), percent students of color, and school neighborhood poverty level.

SPP releases experimental data products, NCES's innovative approach to delivering timely information. Experimental data products are innovative statistical tools created using new data sources or methodologies. Experimental data may not meet all of NCES's quality standards but are of sufficient benefit to data users in the absence of other relevant products to justify release in a timely manner.