Transcript NCES’ Identification of Rural Locales

NCES Update
Jack Buckley, Commissioner
Marilyn Seastrom, Acting Deputy Commissioner
December, 2011
Washington, DC
National Center for Education Statistics
• Mission—to collect and analyze education information
and statistics in a manner that meets the highest
methodological standards; and is
– Timely
– Objective, secular, neutral and nonideological
– Free of partisan political influence
– Free of racial, cultural, gender or regional bias
– Relevant and useful
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What is NCES? What Does NCES Do?
• Primary statistical agency in the U.S. Department of
Education
• Collects, reports, analyzes, and disseminates statistics
on the condition and progress of education at the
preschool, elementary, secondary, postsecondary and
adult levels in the United States and other nations
– Students, parents, teachers/faculty, librarians, guidance
counselors, administrators/other staff
– Background data, learning environment, performance,
assessments, transcripts
– School completions, dropouts, adult literacy
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Key Statistics About NCES
• Budget
– FY2010 $238.6 million
– FY2011 $238.2 million
• FY2011—112 Direct Hires (58 percent are
statisticians)
• Currently—124 Direct Hires
• 100 Immediate Contract Staff
• Approximately 8,000 Contractor Staff for data
collections
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Principal Statistical Agencies: Fiscal Year 2011
Ratio of Funding to Staff
3.50
3.00
2.50
2.00
1.50
1.00
0.50
0.00
Census
BLS
NCES
NASS
NCHS
EIA
BEA
ERS (Ag)
BJS
SOI (IRS)
SRS
(NSF)
ORES
(SSA)
BTS
SOURCE: Statistical Programs of the United States Government , Fiscal Year 2011
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Commissioner’s Office Update
• State Longitudinal Data System Grant
Program
• Support for Department’s Privacy
Initiatives
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State Longitudinal Data System Grant Program
• Since November of 2005 there have been four
rounds of grants funded, with 41 states and DC
receiving at least one SLDS grant
• RFP for New Round of funding
– 12/15/11 Deadline
– K-12, or Early childhood, or Postsecondary/
Workforce
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Support for Department’s Privacy
Initiative
• Established and launched the Privacy Technical
Assistance Center (PTAC)
• Issues technical briefs for comment to further
the national conversation on the best practices
for data security and privacy
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Assessment Division Update
• State Mapping Report
• 2001 Reading and Mathematics Report
Cards
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2011 – Busiest Year in the History of NAEP
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2009 Science Report Card
2009 High School Transcript Study
2010 Civics Report Card
2010 History Report Card
2010 Geography Report Card
2011 Reading and Mathematics Report Card
Hispanic and White Achievement Gaps
State Mapping
State Inclusion Rates
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State Mapping Report
•
Utilizes NAEP as a yardstick to compare
proficiency standards across states
•
Findings:
Wide variation among state
proficiency standards
• Most standards are at or below
the NAEP Basic level
• Most states that made
substantive changes in their
assessment between 2007 and
2009 moved toward more
rigorous standards
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NAEP scale equivalents of state grade 4 mathematics
standards for proficient performance, by state: 2009
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November 1 Release of 2011 Reading and
Mathematics Report Card
• Trend data to the 1990’s (varies by
subject/grade)
• 4th- and 8th-grade state results on overall and
subgroup performance and gaps
• Trial Urban district Assessment (TUDA) report
will be released next week
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Elementary and Secondary Update
• Expansion of NCES GeoMapping
Application
• Schools and Staffing Survey and
Related Components
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Expansion of NCES Geo-Mapping Application
• Currently report data at the school district
level
• Have a contract in place to produce school
boundaries for public schools
• The school boundary project will support
merges with ACS, CCD, and other data
• Produce school level SES and poverty
measures—important given upcoming
changes in reporting for the USDA school
lunch program
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Schools and Staffing Survey System
• From its 1988 inception, SASS has had four core
components: the School Questionnaire, the Teacher
Questionnaire, the Principal Questionnaire, and the
School District Questionnaire
• Also includes a Teacher Follow-up Survey and now a
Principal Follow-up Survey
• Last conducted in 2007-08, 7th round now in data
collection for the 2011-2012 school year
• Many questions and concepts are repeated over time
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Postsecondary, Adult, and Career Education
(PACE) Update
• Improving Transparency for Students,
Parents, and Policy Makers
• Latest Baccalaureate and Beyond Study
(B&B)
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• To improve transparency,
– Developed a methodology for colleges and
universities to use in implementing required net price
calculators
– Collected institutional net price data that are made
available to parents and students through College
Navigator and FAFSA Online
– Launched the College Affordability and Transparency
Center
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College Affordability and Transparency
Center
• Provides information about tuition and net prices
at postsecondary institutions
• Highlights institutions with high and low tuition
and fees as well as high and low net prices (the
price of attendance minus grant and scholarship
aid)
• Shows institutions where tuition and fees and
net prices are increasing at the highest rates
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Baccalaureate and Beyond Study
• Nationally representative cohort of 2007-08
bachelor degree graduates
– First follow-up observes graduates one year after
degree completion (prior studies followed cohort for
up to 10 years)
– Focus on educational debt and its repayment;
education and training; and post-schooling wages
and career (especially teaching)
– Upcoming release of transcript data
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Early Childhood, International, and
Crosscutting Studies Update
• PIAAC in the Field
• Redesigned NHES will Launch in January
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Program for the International Assessment of
Adult Competencies (PIAAC)
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New OECD adult literacy study, including the
U.S. and 25 other countries
Designed to support trends and extend the
range of skills measured with prior OECD
studies
Data collection August 2011—March 2012
Results to be released in October 2013
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Innovations in PIAAC
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Assessments delivered on laptops in the home;
marking the first fully computerized large scale
international assessment
Assessment is adaptive at the “testlet” level;
allowing for more accurate group estimates
Extended the range of skills assessed at both
ends of the distribution; includes components of
reading and problem solving in a technology
rich environment
Expanded information on education and work
experiences and self-reported skill use
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The National Household Education
Surveys (NHES)
• Redesigned collection mode to increase response
rates
• Will repeat some 2005 and 2007 topics
• Parent and Family Involvement in Education (K-12)
• Early Childhood Program Participation (nonparental
education and care of preschool children)
• Data collection January—August 2012
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Innovations in NHES
• Shift from land-line phone to address frame to
reduce problems with sample representativeness
• Shift from phone interviews to 2-stage mail
collection to improve response rates
• Collection conducted through the Census Bureau to
improve response rates
• Simplified instruments in response to concerns over
literacy issues and accessibility
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New Horizons
• Improving on the Past: Longitudinal Study of
Early Adolescence (LSEA)
• Innovation at NCES: NAEP-TIMSS Link
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Improving on the Past: Longitudinal Study of
Early Adolescence (LSEA)
• Nationally representative cohort of students in the
middle-school years—grades 6 through 8
– First round of data collection (2016-17), following the
completion of the current ECLS:K-5
– Next high school cohort would then start with 9th graders in
2019-2020
– Build links across studies using administrative data, other
retrospective data, and imputations
– A slight shift to NPSAS periodicity could allow Beginning
Postsecondary Study (BPS) to pick up the cohort
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Innovation at NCES: NAEP-TIMSS Link
• Policy makers interested in international
benchmarking performance of states and
districts
• Direct approach is to have states/districts
participate in international assessments
• May not be practical due to
• Fiscal considerations
• Increased testing demands
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Innovation at NCES: NAEP-TIMSS Link
• Alternative approach – benchmark performance
through statistical linking of international
assessments with existing state and national
assessments
• Linking of NAEP and TIMSS is of particular
interest and value due to math/science
content
• Administer NAEP and TIMSS 8th grade
mathematics and science to samples of
students in both studies
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Innovation at NCES: NAEP-TIMSS Link
• Goals of the linking study
• Estimate a link between NAEP and TIMSS at the
national level
• Provide each state with an overall predicted mean
TIMSS score
• Predict the percentages of students in the states who
would score above selected points on the TIMSS scale
• Evaluate whether state level TIMSS results can be
successfully predicted from NAEP results without linking
samples/instruments
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NCES Contact Information
NCES website: http://nces.ed.gov/
NCES newsflash: sign up at http://ies.ed.gov/newsflash/
Jack Buckley
[email protected]
Marilyn Seastrom
[email protected]
Thank you
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