This chapter reviews sources on PRESCHOOL, K–12, and higher education, including data about the schools and teachers providing that education and the performance and demographics of the students participating in it. Data about educational attainment—how much formal schooling an adult has completed—is not covered in this chapter. Educational attainment is a common question on American demographic and workforce surveys, including the Decennial Census, the Current Population Survey, and the American Community Survey; see chapters 2 and 20 for more information on accessing these data sets. Globally, educational attainment data is available from the UNdata site (http://data.un.org) and from many regional data sources, also covered in chapter 2.
Major Sources: United States
National Center for Education Statistics (U.S. Department of Education)
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, http://nces.ed.gov) is the major federal source for data about education at all levels in the United States, from pre-kindergarten through graduate school. It also collects extensive data about libraries in the United States.
Some of the most commonly requested data about K–12 education is in the NCES Common Core of Data (CCD, http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/), which contains information about every public school district and public school in the country. Available data sets include number of students, teachers, librarians, guidance counselors, aides, administrators, and other categories of staff; demographic information about enrolled students in each grade, students receiving a high school diploma, students completing high school without receiving a diploma, and the general population of the district; dropout rates and graduation rates; number of students who receive free or reduced-price school lunches, have an individualized education program (IEP), or are migrant students or English-language learners; total and per-student expenditures in various categories; detailed data about the district’s sources of revenue; and district’s long-term and short-term debt. Some of the data is available as far back as 1986. The Common Core of Data does not, however, include data about student or school performance, such as standardized test scores or the fraction of students considered proficient in various subjects.
NCES maintains a similarly comprehensive data set for colleges and universities, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS, http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/). As with the CCD, this data set contains information about number of students and faculty, demographics of enrolled students, retention and graduation rates, and detailed information about sources of revenues and types of expenditures. Other data tracks cost of attendance; demographic, tenure, salary, and fringe benefits information for instructional staff; demographic and salary information for other staff; information about the college or university’s endowment, other assets, and liabilities; amount of financial aid awarded in various categories; fraction of students receiving aid; student loan default rates; percentage of students with disabilities; number of students in various fields; admissions rates; test scores; and number of students who play varsity sports. Some data is available as far back as 1980.
NCES runs one study of student performance, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/). This study provides data about students’ average scores on tests of various subjects including reading, mathematics, U.S. and world history, and foreign language. Data is available broken down by various demographic factors such as gender, race, disability status, parents’ education, English proficiency, and eligibility for free or reduced-price school lunches. Data can also be broken down by state, and, for a few large districts, by school district.
Additionally, NCES has run several longitudinal studies in which they follow a small cohort of students or teachers for many years. These include the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (which has, at different times, followed children from birth through kindergarten, kindergarten through eighth grade, and kindergarten through fifth grade), the Beginning Teacher Longitudinal Study, and other studies that have followed students from high school into adulthood. NCES also runs national surveys on specialized topics such as crime in schools, career and technical education, and private schools. Much of the data from these studies is available on the NCES site, although the availability of some segments of the microdata is restricted.
Major Sources: World
United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization
Internationally, the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics (www.uis.unesco.org) is the most comprehensive collection of education statistics, including preschool and tertiary (college level) education. The data, which is available primarily at the country level (in some cases, regional level), covers number of students enrolled and teachers employed in different levels of education; percentage of teachers at different levels of education who are female; ratio of students enrolled in school to all school-aged children at different levels of education; number of school-aged children who are not in school; graduation rates; rates at which students repeat grades; percentage of children receiving technical or vocational education at various levels; percentage of children who attend private schools at various levels; percentage of children from a country who are attending school in another country; percentage of children attending school in a country who are not from that country; number and percentage of students majoring in various subjects in tertiary education; spending on education at various levels; and more. UNESCO also provides detailed demographic breakdowns for common indicators such as literacy rates and the fraction of children enrolled in school. (Both are indicators for the Millennium Development Goals and thus widely reported in general statistics sources.) For some countries and some variables, data is available as far back as 1970.
Programme for International Student Assessment (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)
Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (Boston College)
Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Boston College)
Internationally comparable student performance data—what students in different countries, on average, have learned—is available from a handful of sources: the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA, www.oecd.org/pisa/) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS, both at http://timssandpirls.bc.edu). PISA tests students 15 and 16 years old on three subjects: reading, mathematics, and science. PIRLS is given to students in the fourth grade and tests only reading. TIMSS is given to students in the fourth and eighth grades and tests both mathematics and science. All three have short time series available: PISA data is available every three years from 2000–2012. TIMSS data is available every fourth year from 1995 onward, and PIRLS data is available every fifth year from 2001 onward. For all three tests, patrons can access reports and tables containing statistics, as well as the microdata (individual students’ answers to individual questions). Unfortunately, not all countries participate in any or all of these tests; when one of these tests is administered, fifty to seventy countries or parts of countries typically participate. European, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries tend to be well represented, but few sub-Saharan African countries take part.
Although the main purpose of these tests is to assess students’ academic skills, PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS also include questions that go beyond academic performance. All three ask questions about the students’ home life and family background, such as their parents’ jobs and education levels; number of books and availability of a computer and an Internet connection in the home; and availability of dedicated workspace for the student at home. TIMSS and PIRLS also ask whether students have experienced any of six specific aspects of bullying behavior at school: being teased, being excluded by fellow students, being slandered, being forced to do things against their will by fellow students, being assaulted by fellow students, and having items stolen. All three studies also ask if students enjoy or think they are good at activities such as reading or studying math and science and investigate students’ attitudes toward their schools and their teachers. PISA includes questions on students’ studying strategies and on how much time they spend on tutoring or other academic lessons outside of school.
All three studies also ask adults involved in a child’s education to complete a survey as well: TIMSS and PIRLS survey teachers and principals; PISA surveys parents and principals. The principal surveys in all three studies ask both objective questions, such as the school’s enrollment, and more subjective questions, such as whether they feel that their school has shortages of various types of resources or how serious of a problem they consider various disciplinary issues to be at their school. The teacher survey in TIMSS and PIRLS includes similar questions about shortages and problems as well as questions about the teacher’s professional background and teaching methods. PISA’s parent survey asks about educational activities the parents participate in with their child as well as their own reading habits and attitudes toward reading and toward their child’s school. The microdata from the teacher, principal, and parent surveys is also available. Identifiers allow the teacher, principal, parent, and student surveys to be linked, so researchers can, for example, see if principals’ and teachers’ assessments of shortages in the same schools are the same, or whether parents’ reading habits correlate with their children’s test scores.
Minor Sources
State Departments of Education
Education has historically been overseen at the state level rather than the federal level in the United States, and even today the richest educational data is often distributed by state-level departments of education, not by the U.S. Department of Education. This is especially true for data about student or school performance, such as standardized test scores, percentage of students meeting proficiency standards, and which schools are showing “adequate yearly progress”; these standards are defined, monitored, and reported primarily at the state level, not nationally. The easiest way to find this data for individual schools or school districts is to search each state’s department of education website.
Other International Projects
TIMSS, PIRLS, and PISA are not the only efforts to create internationally comparable data on student performance and school effectiveness. The Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ, www.sacmeq.org), which has data from the late 1990s to the present for several African countries, is a smaller regional effort toward the same ends. A group of European economists lead by Nadir Altinok used data from all of these assessments and others to create standardized estimates of educational performance for more than one hundred countries, 1965–2010, although estimates are not available for all countries for all years (www.beta-umr7522.fr/Datasets/).
Department for Education (U.K.)
The U.K. government has extensive, easily accessible data on primary and secondary education in England, distributed through its Department for Education (www.gov.uk/dfe, but site is in the process of moving). A smaller amount of data about education in Wales and Scotland is published on the websites of the Welsh (http://wales.gov.uk) and Scottish (www.scotland.gov.uk) governments, respectively. The data about individual schools and districts is similar to that available in the NCES Common Core of Data for the United States: number of students by age and ethnicity; number of students who receive free school lunches; number of students whose first language is not English; number of students with special needs; number of teachers, teaching assistants, librarians, and other types of staff; and expenses, revenues, and per-student spending. Additionally, there is data on student performance, specifically the percentage of students who perform at various levels on tests at key stages, including the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) level.