In part 1 of this blog series, we highlight the benefits and advantages of using federal education data for policymaking at the federal, state, and district levels. In part 2, we will explore the challenges of and opportunities afforded by using these data. States, districts, and schools are inundated with requests for data. To manage the volume of requests and avoid overwhelming educators, many districts have established processes to vet and limit the number of surveys allowed in their schools and administrative offices. District clearance processes are also understandably meant to make ..read more

While federal, state, and district policymakers have used education data as the backbone of their policy and funding decisions for years, there’s nothing quite like a global pandemic to highlight the criticality of reliable data and illuminate the gaps in our collective knowledge.  But where can policymakers find education datasets that are large enough for comparative or trend analyses while still specific enough to measure timely issues in local contexts? How can policymakers extract and interpret information from these education datasets? The National Center for Education Statistics (N ..read more

NCES recently released a finance tables report, Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary Education: FY 21 (NCES 2023-301), which draws from data in the National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS). To accompany the report, NCES has updated the interactive data visualization tool to highlight the per pupil revenues and expenditures (adjusted for inflation) and average daily attendance (ADA) trends from the fiscal year 2021 (FY 21) NPEFS. This tool allows users to see national or state-specific per pupil amounts and year-to-year percentage changes for both total revenu ..read more

As the primary statistical agency of the U.S. Department of Education, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is mandated to report complete statistics on the condition of American education. While the condition of an education system is often assessed through indicators of achievement and attainment, NCES is also mandated to report on the conditions of the education workplace. As such, NCES has reported timely information from schools. For example, this past December, NCES released data that indicated that public schools have experienced difficulty filling positions throughout th ..read more

The Common Core of Data (CCD) contains basic information on public elementary and secondary schools, local education agencies (LEAs), and state education agencies (SEAs) in the United States. The CCD collects fiscal and nonfiscal data about all public schools, public school districts, and state education agencies in the United States. Both IPEDS and CCD provide a sampling frame to many survey collections, including many conducted by NCES and the Department of Education. This blog post, one in a series of posts about CCD nonfiscal data, focuses on CCD’s two major releases and their correspondin ..read more

Recently, the Office of the Chief Statistician, within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), released an initial set of recommended revisions for OMB’s Statistical Policy Directive No. 15 (SPD 15), which provides the statistical standards for collecting and reporting race and ethnicity data across federal agencies. The revisions were proposed by an Interagency Technical Working Group. This is the next step in a process that began last summer with a simple goal: to ensure that the standards better reflect the diversity of the American people. The initial proposals—developed by federal gove ..read more

Financial literacy is a critical skill for young adults—especially as they begin to enter college or the workforce—that is often needed for partial or full financial independence and increased financial decision making. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)—which is coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—gives us a unique opportunity to analyze and understand the financial literacy of 15-year-olds in the United States and other education systems around the world. PISA is the only large-scale nationally representative assessment that me ..read more

In April, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) will kick off the 2023 International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) of eighth-grade students in the United States. This will be the second time the United States is participating in the ICILS. What is ICILS? ICILS is a computer-based international assessment of eighth-grade students’ capacity to use information and communications technologies (ICT)1 productively for a range of different purposes. It is sponsored by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and conducted i ..read more

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and 155 years since the creation of a federal agency to collect and report education statistics for the United States, a role now fulfilled by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). To celebrate both of these anniversaries, NCES has just released a new commemorative report—A Retrospective Look at U.S. Education Statistics—that explores the history and use of federal education statistics. The 11 statistical profiles in phase I of this report can be found within two tabs: Elementary and Secondary Edu ..read more

Tracking differences between the performance of high- and low-performing students is one way of monitoring equity in education. These differences are referred to as achievement gaps or “score gaps,” and they may widen or narrow over time. To provide the most up-to-date international data on this topic, NCES recently released Changes Between 2011 and 2019 in Achievement Gaps Between High- and Low-Performing Students in Mathematics and Science: International Results From TIMSS. This interactive web-based Stats in Brief uses data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIM ..read more