U.S. Department of Education
Institute of Education Sciences
Supporting
Statement For Common Core
of Data-Teacher Compensation Survey
September 2008
National
Center for
Education Statistics
Contents
Page
Introduction 1
Part A. Justification 2
Part B. Collections of Information Employing Statistical Methods 9
Appendix A. Teacher Compensation Survey 2006-2007 Instruction Manual A-1
Appendix B. Teacher Compensation Survey 2006-2007 Data Plan B-1
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List of Tables
Page
Table 1. Total number of
full-time teachers and median years of teaching experience,
age,
contract days, and base salary, and mean base salary, by
participating state:
School year 2005-06 6
Table 2. Number of full-time
teachers, percentage distribution, and median base salary,
by
highest degree earned and participating state: School year 2005-06.
7
T
Supporting Statement For Common Core Of Data Survey System
This is a request for review and approval of the Common Core of Data (CCD) Teacher Compensation Survey (TCS). The supporting statement for Standard Form 83, “Request for OMB Review,” was prepared by the Elementary/Secondary Cooperative System and Institutional Studies Program of the
Elementary/Secondary and Longitudinal and Longitudinal Surveys Division within the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). NCES is requesting a 3-year clearance for the CCD through January 2012. This clearance would apply to the collections for school years 2007–08 through 2010-2011.
The CCD TCS is a new annual collection of some basic information about public school teachers. The information is drawn from the state education agencies’ administrative records systems; no additional data are collected from schools or districts.
We are requesting clearance for the CCD TCS by January 31, 2009 in order to initiate the 2007–08 collection on February 1, 2009.
Six surveys now comprise the CCD survey system. These are:
State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary and Secondary Education;
Public Elementary/Secondary Local Education Agency Universe;
Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe;
National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS);
Local Education Agency Financial Survey.
Teacher Compensation Survey (TCS)
The State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary and Secondary Education, Public Elementary/Secondary Local Education Agency Universe, and Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe data will be collected by EDEN.
The Local Education Agency Financial Survey is co-sponsored by the U.S. Census Bureau, Governments Division, which is responsible for securing clearance for that survey. It is discussed in this request only as it relates to the National Public Education Financial Survey.
The National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS) received OMB clearance for 3 years on March 5, 2008, with OMB Control No. 1850-0067.
The TCS was a new survey, beginning with the 2008 collection of data for 2006-07. There was previously a pilot survey cleared with OMB under #1850-0803 in 12/2007.
Part A of this supporting statement presents the justification for the information collection and an
explanation of any statistical methods employed. Part B addresses the collection of information
employing statistical methods. Part C describes the TCS survey. Appendix A is legislation supporting CCD collections in general. Appendix B is the TCS glossary.
Part A. Justification
Legislative Authorization. The TCS is the first attempt to collect salary, benefits, teaching experience, and other data on each public school teacher. Its authorization to collect this information is encompassed by NCES’s duty to “collect, report, analyze, and disseminate statistical data related to education in the United States” (P.L. 107-279, Part C, Sec 153). Appendix A includes a copy of this legislation.
Regulations and Program Requirements. Participation in the TCS is voluntary, and we expect an average of 30 states per year to report data over the 3-year period.
The TCS is designed to collect a limited amount of information on each public school teacher. The data from this survey can be used by researchers to study the distribution of teachers across schools. Researchers can also make comparisons of teacher salary and benefits. Administrators can use these data to get a more complete picture of teacher compensation in various jurisdictions as well as information on teachers’ education, years of experience, age, race/ethnicity, and gender. The data can also be used to calculate average teacher salaries at the school and district levels, and for calculating the average total compensation teachers receive.
A.3. Describe whether, and to what extent, the collection of information involves the use of
automated, electronic, mechanical or other technological collection techniques or forms of
information technology.
The TCS data are collected electronically from state education agencies. A record layout is sent to states, which create a file and then upload the file through a secure web site. Passwords are used to limit access to the data. The Census Bureau maintains a crosswalk of state teacher IDs and NCES Teacher IDs. Census assigns the NCES teacher ID based on the state teacher ID. The state teacher ID is considered sensitive information in some states.
A.4. Describe efforts to identify duplication.
There are no other surveys collecting data on teacher salaries on every teacher. Salary data are included in the CCD School District Finance Survey and National Public Education Financial Survey, but they are totals at the district and state levels, and do not include benefits data. The NCES Schools and Staffing Survey collect similar data for a sample of teachers every 3 or 4 years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics collects salary and benefits data on teachers at the state and labor market level. The most commonly reported teacher salary data come from the National Education Association. The NEA data are at the state level only.
A-5. If the collection of information involves small businesses or other small entities, describe the methods used to minimize burden.
All of the TCS data are reported to NCES by state education agencies. NCES does not specify how these data are collected. The responding agencies draw upon their existing administrative records to provide the data. No small businesses or other small entities are surveyed in the TCS collection.
A.6. Describe the consequences to Federal program or policy activities if the collections not conducted, or is conducted less frequently, as well as any technical or legal obstacles to reducing burden.
Consequences if not collected. This survey provides researchers and administrators with teacher level data on salary, years of experience, highest degree earned, age, race/ethnicity, and gender. These data can be used to compute average salaries, average years of teaching experience, staffing needs, and other indicators for each school and school district in states participating in the survey. It is a single source of relatively comparable data that cannot be found anywhere else. It links each teacher to specific schools and school districts and tracks teachers over time within states. Though data from this survey are not used in any Federal grant programs, researchers and administrators have requested that NCES collect these data.
The state administrative record systems that supply these data collect the information annually for the states own purposes. Therefore there would be minimal reduction in burden if the CCD were not an annual collection.
A.7. Explain any special circumstances that require the collection to be collected in a manner (list of conditions follows).
There are no circumstances that would require the TCS survey to be reported in a way that would occasion one of the listed conditions.
A.8. If applicable, provide a copy and identify the date and page number of publications in the Federal Register… describe efforts to consult with persons outside the agency to obtain their views on the availability of data, the clarity of instructions and record keeping, disclosure or reporting format (if any), and on the data elements to be recorded, disclosed, or reported.
The Federal Register notice for this survey was published on October 1, 2008, on page 57088, volume 73.
A.9. Explain any decision to provide any payment or gift to respondents, other than remuneration of contractors or grantees.
No payments or gifts are offered.
A.10. Describe any assurance of confidentiality provided to respondents and the basis of the assurance in statute, regulation, or agency policy.
Though these data are available to the public in many states, there are some states that do not make teacher-level data available to the public. Given the confidential nature of these data in some states, NCES will collect all of the teacher salary and benefits data in this collection under section 183 of the 2002 Education Sciences Reform Act. In keeping with the confidentiality provisions of that Act, NCES will offer assurances that the data collected will be considered confidential and protected from disclosure to the fullest extent allowable under law. We will use passwords and secure file transfer protocols in order to limit access to the files. NCES will only make detailed, teacher-level data available to licensed users through a restricted-use data file. NCES does plan to release school-level and district-level summaries of the data. We will employ appropriate disclosure avoidance techniques, such as data perturbation, whole case suppression, and/or multiple case suppression, in order to protect the salary and benefit data from disclosure to the fullest extent possible.
A.11. Provide additional justification for any questions of a sensitive nature, such as sexual behavior and attitudes, religious beliefs, and other matters that are commonly considered private.
The TCS will collect data on salaries and year of birth of teachers. Many state education agencies make these data available to the public, but some do not. Regardless of how other government agencies treat the data, NCES will treat the data as confidential.
A.12. Provide estimates of the hour burden of the collection of information.
The information reported on the TCS survey has already been collected by the reporting agencies for the state’s own uses. The added burden for the CCD is limited to the state education agency’s effort taken in extracting data from files, transferring them to NCES, and responding to edit reports.
Method for estimating costs. The estimated hours of burden to the states are based upon estimates provided by the state education agency in a pilot collection of TCS data from 7 states, in June-July of 2007.
The costs were in turn derived from information about the actual cost of employing an SEA staff person to work with NCES testing programs. These staff persons are comparable in knowledge and experience to the technical staff who report the CCD data. Across 51 states, the average hourly rate estimated for technical staff reporting CCD data is estimated to be $41.61. It was decided, arbitrarily, that 20 percent of the time spent with the CCD collections is contributed by managers, who are estimated to be paid at double the rate of technicians, or $83.22 per hour.
Estimated Annual Burden and Cost in Reporting CCD TCS Data
Survey |
Average Hours |
Respondents |
Total Hours |
Total Cost |
Teacher Compensation Survey |
|
30 |
|
|
Technician ($41.61) |
69 |
|
2,070 |
$86,133 |
Manager ($83.22) |
17 |
|
510 |
$ 42,442 |
Total |
|
|
2,580 |
$128,575 |
Estimated cost to state respondents. Burden hours are estimated to be 86 hours per state. The burden for the 30 states totals to 2,580 hours per year. This is a voluntary data collection, and we hope to get more states participating every year. In the last data collection (for 2006-07 data) we received data from 15 states. We are estimating that an average of 30 states will provide data over the 3-year period. The total estimated cost if all states and the District of Columbia participated in 2009 would be $218,577.
There are no additional record keeping costs to the responding state education agencies. All information collected on the TCS is from administrative record systems and is already collected by the state for its own purposes.
Method for estimating costs. Annual costs are based on current costs for the CCD. The costs include a 22 percent load on salaries for Department of Education staff. Contractor hours are also loaded costs.
Estimated Annual Cost of CCD to Federal Government
Cost Type |
2009 |
Dept ED Staff |
$119,568 |
Census (IAD) |
$766,500 |
Contracted Staff |
$118,519 |
Training |
$169,785 |
Total |
$1,174,371 |
Cost. Department of Education staff assigned to the CCD NPEFS include 60% of one FTE GS/14 staff. One-sixth FTE of the program manager’s time is included; this person is a GS/15. One full-time research assistant is employed through the Education Statistical Services Institute, a contractor to NCES.
Costs reported for the Bureau of the Census include staffing and other charges. The cost was estimated by assuming a 5 percent increase from 2007 collection of 2005-06 data. The cost includes the full cost of salary, benefits, overhead, and fee.
Training costs reflect the cost of general training and professional development for all CCD Fiscal Coordinators at NCES’s Summer Data Conference and the cost of the Management Information Systems Conference. These costs also include all-day training sessions at NCES for new TCS Coordinators. Training is separate for each group, and each group averages 10 new Coordinators a year.
Burden to respondents. The burden associated with all of the CCD data collections will increase by 2,580 hours as a result of adding the TCS survey to the other CCD surveys.
Federal costs. Federal costs are expected to be 5 percent greater than costs in 2008.
Products. NCES will publish Research & Development reports from the data. These publications will present analytical findings based on summaries of the data. NCES also plans to release public-use data files that aggregate the data at the school and school district levels. We will employ whole case suppression, and/or multiple case suppression, in order to protect salary and benefit data to the fullest extent possible. A file of the teacher level data will be made available to licensed users through a restricted-use file. Eventually, after study of these initial years’ results, NCES would like to make some of the public use TCS data, aggregated to the district level, available through NCES data tools such as ‘Build-a-Table’ and the Peer Search. (These web tools allow users to create their own lists, counts, or cross-tabulations.) The tables below show how the TCS data will be presented as simple cross-tabulations.
Table 1.—Total number of full-time teachers and median years of teaching experience, age, contract days, and base salary, and |
||||||
Table 1.—mean base salary, by participating state: School year 2005–06 |
||||||
|
||||||
Participating
|
Total
number of |
Median
years |
Median
|
Median
number |
Median |
Mean
|
Arizona |
49,385 |
8 |
— |
— |
$40,296 |
$42,772 |
Arkansas |
28,633 |
13 |
45 |
190 |
39,969 |
40,981 |
Colorado |
41,431 |
9 |
43 |
184 |
42,676 |
44,777 |
Florida |
137,405 |
10 |
43 |
196 |
38,014 |
41,740 |
Iowa |
28,054 |
15 |
45 |
191 |
40,935 |
41,145 |
Missouri |
59,991 |
10 |
— |
183 |
37,802 |
40,602 |
Oklahoma |
36,476 |
12 |
45 |
180 |
33,516 |
34,631 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
— Not
available
1
Base salary is defined as the negotiated annual salary for teaching
duties, excluding bonuses and extra pay for extra duties.
NOTE:
How to read this table (medians): Using Arizona, years of teaching
experience as an example, if all full-time teachers were listed by
years of teaching experience, the teacher at the midpoint (median)
would have 8 years of teaching experience. Only the listed seven
states participated in the Pilot Teacher Compensation Survey. Data
for Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, and Oklahoma are for full-time
teachers, teaching at one school with full-time equivalency (FTE)
greater than or equal to 0.9 only, and whose base salary did not
include pay for other duties. Data for Arizona and Arkansas are for
teachers teaching at one school with FTE greater than or equal to 0.9
only. Arizona and Arkansas did not report whether a teacher was a
full-time teacher or whether the reported base salary excluded pay
for other duties. Data are not adjusted for geographic cost
differences.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National
Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), "Pilot
Teacher Compensation Survey," school year 2005–06, Version
1a.
†
Not
applicable.
# Rounds to zero.
1
Base salary is defined as the negotiated annual salary for teaching
duties, excluding bonuses and extra pay for extra duties.
NOTE:
How to read this table (medians): Using Arizona, bachelor's degree
as an example, if all full-time teachers with a bachelor's degree
were listed by base salary, the teacher at the midpoint (median)
would have a base salary of $36,917. Only the listed seven states
participated in the Pilot Teacher Compensation Survey. Data for
Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, and Oklahoma are for full-time
teachers, teaching at one school with full-time equivalency (FTE)
greater than or equal to 0.9 only, and whose base salary did not
include pay for other duties. Data for Arizona and Arkansas are for
teachers teaching at one school with FTE greater than or equal to 0.9
only. Arizona and Arkansas did not report whether a teacher was a
full-time teacher or whether the reported base salary excluded pay
for other duties. Data are not adjusted for geographic cost
differences. Detail may not sum to totals because of
rounding.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center
for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), "Pilot
Teacher Compensation Survey," school year 2005–06, Version
1a.
Complex analytical techniques are not used with the TCS.
Timeline. The TCS is an annual collection, and the schedule is shown below. Note that the files cannot be closed until the last state is able to report all requested data.
TCS Survey Collection, Processing, Publication
February Mail instructions to respondents, open website to receive data.
March First reporting date. Training for new TCS Coordinators.
September Close TCS file on Tuesday following Labor Day.
March NCES review of files, file documentation, short reports.
May An R&D report and data files will be released.
July Training for all CCD and TCS Coordinators.
NCES displays the OMB expiration date on the instruction manual sent to the state CCD Coordinators and on the data collection web site.
There are no exceptions to the items in that certification.
NOTE: Regarding race/ethnicity data
On October 19, 2007, the U.S. Department of Education posted to the Federal Register the “Final Guidance on Maintaining, Collecting, and Reporting Racial and Ethnic Data to the U.S. Department of Education.” (See the Federal Register, Volume 72, Number 202, pp. 59266-59279: http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20071800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2007/pdf/E7-20613.pdf).
SEAs will be required to implement this guidance in order to report data for the 2010–2011 school year. Under the guidance, although not required to do so, SEAs already collecting individual-level data in the manner specified by the notice are encouraged to immediately begin reporting data in this format to the Department. However, because the 2007-08 TCS data collection instruments and software designs are nearly completed, the new R/E reporting categories will not be available for reporting TCS data until the 2008-09 collection year, which begins in January 2010.
The current and new race/ethnicity categories for reporting TCS data are outlined below.
Current TCS Reporting Categories
1 = American Indian / Alaskan Native
2 = Asian / Pacific Islander
3 = Hispanic
4 = Black, Not Hispanic
5 = White, Not Hispanic
6 = None of the Above
New TCS Reporting Categories
1 = Non-Hispanic American Indian / Alaska Native
2 = Non-Hispanic Asian
3 = Hispanic of Any Race
4 = Non-Hispanic Black or African American
5 = Non-Hispanic White
6 = Non-Hispanic Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
7 = Non-Hispanic Two or More Races
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