2021 NAEP Monthly School Survey: Standing Up a New Data Collection in Less Than a Month

• In Event: 2021 NAEP Monthly School Survey: Learning From U.S. Schools on Their Response to Pandemic

Abstract

The NAEP School Monthly Study, originated by an executive order from President Biden on his second day in office, examines the impact COVID-19 has had on our nation’s public and private schools, and the ability and opportunity for students to attend in person vs. remotely disaggregated by demographic groups. Given the President’s desire to measure progress against the administration’s 100-day goal to get more K-12 students back to school in person, the survey timeframe was extremely short, with just one month to stand up a program to collect data from about 5,000 schools throughout the United States on a monthly basis. NCES took advantage of the existing NAEP infrastructure. Because the NAEP 2021 data collection had been postponed to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were able to re-purpose already sampled schools and established relationships with state, district, and school coordinators for this new study. In addition to leveraging NAEP infrastructure, NCES developed a plan to relate data collected about school attendance patterns and trends in the spring of 2021 with student performance in early 2022.

In this paper we will describe how we conducted this important study, including sampling, recruiting, data collection, and data delivery. We used the already-drawn NAEP school sample and the school recruitment process through NAEP state coordinators and NAEP coordinators in NAEP’s Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) program. Dedicated staff worked with private schools to achieve high response rates. We provided training and support for NAEP state and TUDA coordinators, who supported schools in this monumental new data collection effort. The data collection system, built out of an existing school-based data collection system, included both a single school data submission as well as a multiple-school submission, used by some districts and states to ease burden on schools. Quality control checks were implemented, as well as the creation of a rapid response rate reporting system to monitor achieving response rate goals every month. The response rate hovered around 70% throughout the 5 months, driven by close monitoring on a daily basis, high-level outreach from the U.S. Department of Education and the White House, combined with intense efforts from NAEP coordinators in every state and many large urban school districts. We will also outline the quick turnaround for data collected from schools for delivery to meet tight timeliness for analysis and reporting on a monthly basis.

Authors

• Chris Averett, Westat

• Rob Dymowski, Westat

• Marcie Hickman, Westat

• Jason Nicholas, Westat

• Rick Rogers, Westat

• Leslie Wallace, Westat