Appendix A
Glossary of Terms and Acronyms Used in This Report
508 compliance | Federal agencies’ responsibilities under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act to make websites, documents, and products accessible to people with disabilities. |
Accessibility | When “[a] person with a disability is afforded the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as a person without a disability in an equally effective and equally integrated manner, with substantially equivalent ease of use” (U.S. ED, 2013). |
Administrative records | Administrative data are defined in varying ways, but traditionally refer to data collected by governments for other than statistical purposes (e.g., through the process of administering a program). See Appendix B for more detail. |
Alternative data sources | Includes administrative data as well as other data from sources and technologies currently available (e.g., commercial data, web-scraped data, processing of video or audio data) and those that may become available in the future. These sources are alternative to the collection of data using surveys and censuses, the traditional federal statistical approaches (though many of the traditional approaches have relied on |
administrative data for frames, imputations, and other uses). | |
API | Application programming interface. |
ASA | American Statistical Association. |
ATES | The Adult Training and Education Survey, a module on the National Household Education Survey, collected data on adults ages 16–65 not enrolled in high school, focusing on nondegree credentials and work experience programs. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
B&B | The Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study, which “examines students’ education and work experiences after they complete a bachelor’s degree, with a special emphasis on the experiences of new elementary and secondary teachers. Following several cohorts of students over time, B&B looks at bachelor’s degree recipients’ workforce participation, income and debt repayment, and entry into and persistence through graduate school programs, among other indicators” (Table B-1). |
BEA | Bureau of Economic Analysis. |
BJS | Bureau of Justice Statistics. |
BLS | Bureau of Labor Statistics. |
Blue Book | Informal name for the Statistical Programs of the United States Government, an annual publication of the U.S. Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget, which summarizes U.S. government statistical activities. |
BPS | “Each cycle of the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS) follows a cohort of students who are enrolled in their first year of postsecondary education. The study collects data on student persistence in, and completion of, postsecondary education programs [including postsecondary transcript studies], their transition to employment, |
demographic characteristics, and changes over time in their goals, marital status, income, and debt, among other indicators” (Table B-1). | |
BTLS | Beginning Teacher Longitudinal Study. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
BTS | Bureau of Transportation Statistics. |
CCD | Common Core of Data. |
CDO | Chief data officer. |
CEDS | “The Common Education Data Standards (CEDS) are a national, collaborative effort to develop voluntary, common education data standards for a key subset of K–12 (e.g., demographics, program participation, course information) and K–12-to-postsecondary education transition variables” (Table B-1). |
CIP | “The Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) provides a taxonomic scheme that supports the accurate tracking and reporting of postsecondary fields of study and program completions activity in IPEDS. An important product of the CIP effort is the crosswalk of CIP program codes to the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system, which is referred to as the CIP-SOC Crosswalk” (Table B-1). |
CIPSEA | The Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act |
COR | Contracting officer’s representative. |
CPS | Current Population Survey, a labor force survey collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. NCES co-sponsors the October Supplement to the CPS. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
CTE | Career and technical education. |
Data governance | “Data governance is a term used on both a macro and a micro level. The former is a political concept |
and forms part of international relations and internet governance; the latter is a data management concept and forms part of corporate data governance” (Wikipedia, 2021a). | |
Diversity | The presence of differences that may include race and ethnicity, gender identity, (dis)ability, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, language, Veteran status, age, and other intersubjective categories that historically have served to systematically and differentially allocate material resources and symbolic value to various members of society. This includes differences in life experiences and often includes populations that have been and remain underrepresented and marginalized in the broader society. |
DOL | Department of Labor. |
ECLS-B | Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: Birth Cohort (2001), longitudinal survey of children from birth through kindergarten. Initial collection in 2001. There were four interviews at age 9 months, 2 years, preschool, and kindergarten. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
ECPP | Early Childhood Program Participation, a module of the National Household Education Survey. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
ED | Department of Education. |
EDGE | Education, Demographic and Geographic Estimates program. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
EDSCLS | “ED School Climate Surveys (EDSCLS) are a suite of survey instruments that were developed for schools, districts, and states by NCES. This NCES effort extends activities to measure and support school climate by ED’s Office of Safe and Healthy Students (OSHS). Through EDSCLS, schools nationwide have access to survey instruments and a survey platform that allows for the collection and reporting of school |
climate data across stakeholders at the local level. The surveys can be used to produce school-, district-, and state-level scores on various indicators of school climate from the perspectives of students, teachers, non-instructional school staff, principals, and parents/guardians. NCES also developed psychometric benchmarks to enable meaningful comparisons between student subgroups and between schools” (NCES, 2022b). | |
Education data ecosystem | The dynamic system of education data sources and producers, methods, products, services, and consumers and their mutually reinforcing interrelationships. |
EIA | Energy Information Administration. |
ELS | Education Longitudinal Study (2002), one of a series of six longitudinal studies following middle- or high-school students through school and sometimes beyond. Depending on the survey, the data include surveys of students, parents, teachers, school administrators, student assessments in math and English, and high school transcripts. |
EO | Evaluation Officer. |
Equity | The “process of ensuring processes and programs are impartial, fair, [just,] and provide equal possible outcomes for every individual. It is about deconstructing the systems that do not treat people the way they should and would want to be treated” (National Safety Council, 2022, p. 1). |
ERS | Economic Research Service. |
ESRA | Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002, established the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), with the National Center for Education Statistics as one of IES’s centers. |
Evidence | The collection, compilation, processing, analysis, and dissemination of an available body of facts, signs, or objects indicating whether a belief or proposition is |
true or valid. U.S. law on confidential information protection and statistical efficiency defines evidence as “information produced as a result of statistical activities conducted for a statistical purpose” (44 U.S. Code § 3561(6). Available: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/44/3561). The U.S. Office of Management and Budget provides additional guidance that evidence includes “four interdependent components…: foundational fact finding, policy analysis, program evaluation, and performance measurement. Each of these components informs and directs the others, and many evidence-building activities may be hard to categorize because they organically include more than one component” (OMB, 2019b, p. 13). | |
Evidence Act | Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018. |
Experimental data | Experimental data are typically collected through an experimental or quasi-experimental design in attempt to determine a causal relationship. Randomized controlled trials are often considered the gold standard for generating experimental data. |
FEDES | Federal Employment Data Exchange System, a program of the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) of the Department of Labor. The system was suspended as of February 2018, but ETA was working with the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Defense to establish the necessary protocols for the exchange of wage data. The system was intended to provide state agencies with an efficient way to include federal employment information in performance and evaluation reports required by federal and state law and regulations, and data were to be exchanged quarterly between participating states and participating federal agencies (U.S. Department of Labor, 2021). |
FRSS | Fast Response Survey System, which conducted multiple surveys per year on special topics sometimes |
requested by NCES and sometimes by other ED agencies. The survey respondents have included public and private elementary and secondary schools, elementary and secondary school teachers and principals, local education agencies, public libraries, and school libraries. The system ended in 2021 because of staffing issues at NCES. See Table B-1 for more detail. | |
FTE | Full-time equivalent, with respect to employees. |
FY | Fiscal year. |
HS&B | High School and Beyond Longitudinal Survey (1982 and planned for 2022), two of a series of six longitudinal studies following middle- or high-school students through school and sometimes beyond. Depending on the survey, the data include surveys of students, parents, teachers, school administrators, student assessments in math and English, and high-school transcripts (NCES, 2022c). |
HSLS | High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, one of a series of six longitudinal studies following middle- or high-school students through school and sometimes beyond. Depending on the survey, the data include surveys of students, parents, teachers, school administrators, student assessments in math and English, and high-school transcripts (NCES, 2022d). |
HSTS | High School Transcript Study. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
IAA | Interagency agreement. |
IAP | International Activities Program. |
IES | Institute of Education Sciences, parent organization of NCES. |
Inclusion | The practice of ensuring that people feel a sense of belonging and that everyone, regardless of background, can participate fully in development |
opportunities and decision-making processes that affect their lives. | |
IPA | Intergovernmental Personnel Act Mobility Program. |
IPEDS | “The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), established as the core postsecondary education data collection program for NCES, is a system of surveys designed to collect data from all…institutions and educational organizations whose primary purpose is to provide postsecondary education. The IPEDS system is built around a series of 12 interrelated surveys to collect institution-level data in such areas as enrollments, program completions, faculty, staff, finances, and academic libraries” (Table B-1). |
IRS | Internal Revenue Service. |
LEA | Local education agency. |
MGLS2017 | Middle Grades Longitudinal Survey. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
NAAL/NALS | The National Assessment of Adult Literacy is “a nationally representative assessment of English literacy among American adults age 16 and older” (Table B-1). It is preceded by the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), conducted in 1992. |
NAEP | “The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as ‘the Nation’s Report Card,’ is the only nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America’s students know and can do in various subject areas. Since 1969, assessments have been conducted periodically in reading, mathematics, science, writing, U.S. history, civics, geography, and the arts. In addition to tests of students’ knowledge, NAEP includes surveys of students, teachers, and principals. NAEP is a congressionally mandated survey” (Table B-1). |
NASS | National Agricultural Statistics Service. |
NCEE | National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance. The commissioner of NCEE is the Department of Education’s chief evaluation officer. |
NCES | National Center for Education Statistics. The commissioner of NCES is the Department of Education’s chief statistical official. |
NCHS | National Center for Health Statistics. |
NCSER | National Center for Special Education Research. |
NCSES | National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. |
NCVS | National Crime Victimization Survey, a household survey collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
NELS | National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88), one of a series of six longitudinal studies following middle- or high-school students through school and sometimes beyond. Depending on the survey, the data include surveys of students, parents, teachers, school administrators, student assessments in math and English, and high-school transcripts. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
NHES | National Household Education Survey, conducted for NCES by the U.S. Census Bureau. Consists of modules that address various topics, such as early childhood care and education, family involvement in schools, and homeschooling. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
NISS | National Institute of Statistical Sciences. |
NLS | National Longitudinal Study (1972), one of a series of six longitudinal studies following middle- or high-school students through school and sometimes beyond. Depending on the survey, the data include surveys of students, parents, teachers, school administrators, student assessments in math and English, and high-school transcripts. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
NPSAS | “The National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) is a comprehensive study [using both student interviews and administrative records] that examines how students and their families pay for postsecondary education. It includes nationally representative samples of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as students attending public and private less-than-2-year institutions, community colleges, 4-year colleges, and major universities. Both students who receive financial aid and those who do not receive financial aid [are sampled]. NPSAS has been conducted every 3–4 years since 1987” (Table B-1). |
NPSAS:18-AC | National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, Administrative Collection. |
NSOPF | The National Study of Postsecondary Faculty was “a nationally representative sample of full- and part-time faculty and instructional staff at public and private not-for-profit 2- and 4-year institutions in the United States, designed to provide data about faculty and instructional staff to postsecondary education researchers and policy makers. There are no plans to repeat the study. Rather, NCES plans to provide technical assistance to state postsecondary data systems” (Table B-1). |
NTPS | The National Teacher and Principal Survey “collects extensive data on American public and private elementary and secondary schools every two to three years.…NTPS provides data on characteristics and qualifications of teachers and principals, teacher hiring practices, professional development, class size, and other conditions in schools. NTPS replaces the Schools and Staffing Survey, which was last conducted in the 2011–12 school year” (Table B-1). |
OMB | U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President. |
OPEPD | Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development in the Department of Education. It is the umbrella office for the Office of the Chief Data Officer. |
OPM | U.S. Office of Personnel Management. |
ORES | Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics, a statistical office in the Social Security Administration. |
PEELS | The Pre-Elementary Education Longitudinal Study collected data on “the preschool and early elementary school experiences of a nationally representative sample of children with disabilities and the outcomes they achieved, and included children’s preschool environments and experiences, their transition to kindergarten, their kindergarten and early elementary education experiences, and their academic and adaptive skills” (National Center for Special Education Research, 2021). This is a NCSER study and NCES issues restricted data licenses for the data and provides publicly available data in its DATALAB tool (National Center for Special Education Research, 2021). |
PEQIS | Postsecondary Education Quick Information System. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
PFI | The Parent and Family Involvement in Education (PFI) is a module conducted as part of the National Household Education Survey. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
PIAAC | Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
PII | Personally identifiable information. |
PISA | The Program for International Student Assessment is “an international assessment that measures 15-year-old students’ reading, mathematics, and science literacy every three years. First conducted in 2000, the major domain of study rotates between reading, mathematics, and science in each cycle” (NCES, 2022e). PISA is conducted by NCES in coordination with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (NCES, 2022e). |
PSS | The Private School Survey, “a biennial universe collection of private elementary and secondary schools. PSS generates biennial data on the total number of private schools, teachers, and students and builds an accurate and complete list of private schools to serve as a sampling frame for NCES surveys of private schools” (Table B-1). |
PTAC | The Privacy Technical Assistance Center, located in the U.S. Department of Education’s Student Privacy Policy Office. It was “established in 2010 a ‘one-stop’ resource for education stakeholders to learn about data privacy, confidentiality, and security practices related to student-level data systems and other uses of student data” (U.S. ED, 2021c). PTAC provides several services, such as a help desk, training materials, and technical assistance (U.S. ED, 2021c). NCES was a key player in the development of PTAC, a departmentwide initiative under ED’s Open Government Plan in 2010 (U.S. ED, 2021b). |
R1 | A category of the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, indicating U.S. doctoral universities that engage in “very high research activity” (Indiana University, 2022). |
Randomized controlled trial | Provides one form of experimental data, frequently viewed as the gold standard of experimental data (see Experimental data). |
RUD license | Restricted Use Data License. NCES uses RUD licenses as a mechanism for making more detailed data available to qualified researchers. |
SASS | Schools and Staffing Survey, an NCES survey last conducted in 2011–2012 and replaced by the National Teacher and Principal Survey. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
SCED | School Codes for the Exchange of Data, a course classification system designed to facilitate schools’ and districts’ maintenance of secondary-level transcript |
data over time and the transfers of those data among districts and states. See Table B-1 for more detail. | |
SCS | School Crime Supplement, a supplement of the National Crime Victimization Survey. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
SEA | State education agency. |
SL position | Senior Level position, a “category of high level Federal jobs [that] was established in 1990 to replace GS-16, 17, and 18 of the General Schedule. There are two broad types of SL positions. Most Senior Level employees are in non-executive positions whose duties are broad and complex enough to be classified above GS 15. However, in a few agencies that are statutorily exempt from inclusion in the Senior Executive Service, executive positions are staffed with SL employees” (U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Policy, Data, Oversight: Senior Executive Service. Available: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/senior-executiveservice/scientific-senior-level-positions [March 2022]). |
SLDS | Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems Grant Program. |
SO | Statistical official, as established under the Evidence Act. |
SOC | Standard Occupational Classification system. |
SOI | Statistics of Income Division, a statistical office in the Internal Revenue Service. |
SPP | School Pulse Panel survey. The school pulse panel is a monthly panel study to examine the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on K–12 public schools. It produces nationally representative data with a quick turnaround. SPP is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau on behalf of NCES. See Table B-1 for more detail. |
SSA | Social Security Administration. |
SSOCS | School Survey on Crime and Safety, a “sample survey of the nation’s public schools designed to provide estimates of school crime, discipline, disorder, programs, and policies” (Table B-1). |
ST position | Senior Technical position. “This unique category of Federal jobs covers non-executive positions classified above the GS-15 level, and involves performance of high-level research and development in the physical, biological, medical, or engineering sciences, or a closely-related field. Many of the Federal Government’s most renowned scientists and engineers serve in ST positions” (U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Policy, Data, Oversight: Senior Executive Service. Available: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/senior-executive-service/scientificsenior-level-positions [March 2022]). |
Statistical activities | “The collection, compilation, processing, or analysis of data for the purpose of describing or making estimates concerning the whole, or relevant groups or components within, the economy, society, or the natural environment. [This] includes the development of methods or resources that support those activities, such as measurement methods, models, statistical classifications, or sampling frames” (44 U.S. Code § 3561(10). Available: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/44/3561 [March 2022]). |
Statistical purpose | “The description, estimation, or analysis of the characteristics of groups, without identifying the individuals or organizations that comprise such groups. [This] includes the development, implementation, or maintenance of methods, technical or administrative procedures, or information resources that support [these] purposes” (44 U.S. Code § 3561(12). Available: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/44/3561 [March 2022]). |
STEM | Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. |
TIMSS | Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, which “provides reliable and timely trend |
data on the mathematics and science achievement of U.S. students compared to that of students in other countries. TIMSS data have been collected from students at grades 4 and 8 every 4 years since 1995.… TIMSS is sponsored by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement and conducted in the United States by the National Center for Education Statistics” (NCES, 2022f). | |
USDA | U.S. Department of Agriculture. |
Validity | “Validity is the main extent to which a concept, conclusion or measurement is well-founded and likely corresponds accurately to the real world” (Wikipedia, 2022). |
Web-scraping method | An automated process of collecting data from an online source. Also known as an internet harvesting method. See Appendix B for more detail. |
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