Justification |
A |
Justification |
A |
The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:11) is a survey that focuses on children’s early school experiences beginning with kindergarten and continuing through the fifth grade. It includes interviews with parents, teachers, school administrators, and nonparental care providers, as well as direct child assessments. Like its sister study, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K),1 the ECLS-K:11 is exceptionally broad in its scope and coverage of child development, early learning, and school progress, drawing together information from multiple sources to provide rich data about the population of children who will be kindergartners in the 2010-11 school year. As with the original ECLS-K, the ECLS-K:11 is sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education. It is being conducted for NCES by Westat, with the Educational Testing Service (ETS) as subcontractor. Clearances for studying the first ECLS-K cohort were granted in 1996 for the kindergarten data collection (OMB No. 1850-0719), in 1998 for the first grade to fifth grade data collections (OMB No. 1850-0750), and for the spring 2006 field test data collection with eighth and tenth grade students and their teachers and the spring 2007 national data collection for eighth graders (OMB No. 1850-0750). This current submission requests revision of the most-recent previously obtained clearance for the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K; OMB No. 1850-0750). This submission to conduct the ECLS-K:11 describes procedures and instruments planned for both the field test and full-scale kindergarten data collections for ECLS-K:11. An additional OMB package will be submitted prior to the full-scale study to update procedures and questionnaires based on results of the field test. NCES requests that the 60-day notice be waived when it submits the full-scale package to OMB. At this time, NCES is requesting clearance from OMB to: (1) conduct a field test with kindergarteners, first, second, and third grade children, and kindergarten, first, and second grade teachers in fall 2009,2 and (2) collect data from the full ECLS‑K:11 sample in the fall and spring of kindergarten (2010-11).
ECLS-K:11 is the third in an important series of longitudinal studies sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) that examine child development, school readiness, and early school experiences. It shares many of the same goals as its predecessors, the ECLS-K and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), but also advances research possibilities by providing updated information and addressing recent changes in education policy:
Like its predecessors, ECLS-K:11 will provide a rich and comprehensive source of information on children’s early learning and development, transitions into kindergarten and beyond, and progress through school for a new cohort of children;
ECLS-K:11 will provide data relevant to emerging policy-related domains not measured fully in previous studies; and
Coming more than a decade after the inception of the ECLS-K, ECLS-K:11 will allow cross-cohort comparisons of two nationally representative kindergarten classes experiencing different policy, educational, and demographic environments.
ECLS-K:11 is conducted by NCES in close consultation with other offices and organizations within and outside the U.S. Department of Education. ECLS-K:11 is authorized by law under the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-279), section 153 (7):
“The Statistics Center shall collect, report, analyze, and disseminate statistical data related to education in the United States and in other nations, including -- (7) conducting longitudinal and special data collections necessary to report on the condition and progress of education;”
Section 153 of the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 further states that:
“all collection, maintenance, use, and wide dissemination of data by the Institute, including each office, board, committee, and Center of the Institute, shall conform with the requirements of section 552A of title 5, United States Code, the confidentiality standards of subsection c of this section, as amended, and sections 1232g and 1232h of this title. [which protect the confidentiality rights of individual respondents with regard to the data collected, reported, and published under this title to the fullest extent allowable under law].” (Section 153)
The ECLS‑K:11 is part of a longitudinal studies program. The prior studies pertain to two cohorts—a kindergarten cohort and a birth cohort. Together these cohorts provide the range and breadth of data required to more fully describe and understand children’s health and early learning, development, and education experiences in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The birth cohort (ECLS-B) followed a national sample of children, born in the year 2001, from birth through kindergarten entry. The ECLS-B focused on the characteristics of children and their families that influence children’s school readiness and first experiences with formal schooling, as well as children’s early health care and in- and out-of-home experiences.
The ECLS‑K followed a nationally representative cohort of children from kindergarten through eighth grade. The base year data were collected in the fall and spring of the 1998-99 school year when the sampled children were in kindergarten. A total of 21,260 kindergartners throughout the nation participated by having a child assessment and/or parent interview conducted during that school year. Five more waves of data were collected: in fall and spring of the 1999-2000 school year when most, but not all, of the base year children were in first grade; in the spring of the 2001-02 school year when most, but not all, of the base year children were in third grade; in the spring of the 2003-04 school year when most, but not all, of the base year children were in fifth grade; and, in the spring of the 2006-07 school year when most, but not all, of the base year children were in eighth grade.3
The sample for the ECLS-K:11 is a nationally representative sample of children who will attend kindergarten in 2010-11. The sample will include children in kindergarten for the first time and children repeating kindergarten. In the fall of 2010, children will be selected using a multistage probability design. In the first stage, 90 primary sampling units (PSUs) that are counties or groups of counties will be selected with probability proportional to size (PPS). In the second stage, public and private schools offering kindergarten will be selected, also with PPS with an oversampling of private schools. The third-stage sampling units will be children in kindergarten or of kindergarten age in ungraded schools or classrooms. Children will be selected within each sampled school using equal probability systematic sampling, with a higher sampling rate for Asians, Native Hawaiians, and Other Pacific Islanders, who will be oversampled as one group, so as to achieve a minimum required sample size for them. Further discussion of these issues can be found in section B.1, Universe, Sample Design, and Estimation.
The national kindergarten data collection will include direct child assessments, height and weight measurement, screening of children’s hearing, parent interviews, school administrator and teacher questionnaires (both regular classroom and special education teachers), and wrap-around care and education provider interviews.4 Data will be collected twice, once in the fall and once in the spring, though not all components will be included in each collection (for example, the school administrator questionnaire will be included only in the spring).5 As in ECLS-K, computer assisted interviewing (CAI) will be the mode of data collection for the child assessment and the parent and child care provider interviews. School administrator and teacher data will be collected via self-administered questionnaires.
Cognitive Assessments. As in ECLS-K, a direct cognitive assessment will be used in ECLS-K:11. The assessment measures the cognitive domains of reading, mathematics, executive functioning (described further below in section A.3.c), and science using age- and grade-appropriate items. The cognitive assessment will be administered directly to the sampled children on an individual basis. The structure of the ECLS-K:11 kindergarten assessment will be two-stage, the same as the ECLS-K base year assessment. All children first will be administered a routing test for each measured domain. Performance on the routing test will determine which one of three second-stage tests will be appropriate for the child’s skill level. A majority of items in the ECLS-K:11 assessment will be the same as those used in the ECLS-K base year assessment in order to enable researchers to conduct cross-cohort analyses. In addition, the ECLS-K:11 child assessments will include measures of the children’s height and weight. A feasibility study on screening children’s hearing and vision will be conducted during the field test in fall 2009.
During the assessment session, children also will be asked a short set of questions about their school experience, such as how well they like school, how well they like their teacher, and how well they get along with other children at school.
Parent Interviews. A parent interview will be administered to all participating parents/guardians of the children in the ECLS-K:11 study. The interviews will be developed in English and Spanish; professional interpreters will be used to administer the English-language version to parents who speak neither English nor Spanish (i.e., the interpreters will translate from English to the parent's native language during the interview). The parent instrument will ask about family structure, family literacy practices, parental involvement in school, nonparental care arrangements, household composition, family income, parent education levels, and other demographic indicators. Parents will also be asked to report on their children’s level of physical functioning, socioemotional functioning, health, and disability status. The parent interview will not be field tested because it includes the same types of questions that have been previously fielded in ECLS-K and other NCES studies (e.g., ECLS-B, National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES), Education Longitudinal Survey of 2002 (ELS:2002), National Education Longitudinal Survey of 1988 (NELS:88)).
Teacher Questionnaires. Participating teachers of sampled children will complete the teacher questionnaires. The instruments include questions about the teacher’s own background and education, class materials, teaching practices, and specific information about the topics and skills taught in the classroom. These questionnaires provide information on the types of materials being used to teach the nation’s kindergarteners, what and how they are being taught, the characteristics of their classrooms, and the background and experience of their teachers.
Teachers also will be asked to complete individual rating scales for each of the sampled children in their classroom. The rating scales will contain items about children’s skills in the areas of language and literacy, mathematics, science, and executive functioning; children’s social skills and behaviors; and information about program placements and special services that each child may receive. These data obtained from teachers can be compared to the results of direct assessments administered to the sampled kindergarteners. As results from additional years of collection become available, a picture of children’s skills over time can be developed using both teacher reports and direct cognitive assessment results, and tentative conclusions can be drawn about children’s progression in school. The rating scales that will be used in the ECLS-K:11 were used the ECLS-K; however, because there have been changes to the rating scales as fielded in the ECLS-K, they will be included in the ECLS-K:11 field test.
Children’s special education teachers also will be asked to complete questionnaires for children with special needs, identified as those children who have an Individual Education Plan (IEP) on file at the school. Questions asked of these teachers will be useful in examining special education curricula and the services being received by children with disabilities.
School Administrator Questionnaire. This questionnaire will be completed by participating school administrators in the schools attended by the ECLS-K:11 children. This instrument includes a broad range of questions about the school setting, policies, and practices at both the school level and in kindergarten, as well as questions about the principal and the teaching staff. These items will help researchers understand the school contexts for kindergarten children throughout the nation. Comparisons can be made between children attending different types of schools, including public and private schools (with private schools being further identified as religious or nonreligious); rural, urban, and suburban schools; and schools of different sizes. Data from this questionnaire can be merged with data from the child assessments and teacher questionnaires. Linking these data will allow researchers to determine the degree to which educational outcomes of various groups of children are associated with the differences in the schools that the children attend. The questionnaire will be very similar to the previous ECLS-K school administrator questionnaire and, therefore, will not be included in the field test.
Wrap-Around Early Care and Education Provider Interview (WECEP). This interview will be completed by the primary wrap-around care provider of sampled children who have before- or after-school care and education arrangements for at least 5 hours per week. Home and center-based providers will participate in a 30- to 40- minute computer assisted telephone interview. Center directors will participate in a 10-minute interview. Topics include the activities offered to children during the hours they are in care, purposes of the program (e.g., to improve children's academic skills, to provide recreational activities) if center-based, characteristics of other children in the care setting, curricula used, caregiver beliefs and attitudes, the learning environment of the care arrangement, caregiver/teacher background, and, in the case of center-based arrangements, center staffing and services. The interview will be almost identical to the ECLS-B WECEP interview fielded during that study’s kindergarten collection and, therefore, will not be included in the field test.
In fall 2009, a field test will be conducted to test the direct assessments, teacher rating scales, and data collection procedures prior to the national study. The field test will serve as the primary vehicle for: (1) estimating the psychometric parameters of all items in the assessment battery item pool, (2) producing psychometrically sound and valid direct and indirect cognitive assessment instruments, (3) assessing the feasibility of screening children’s vision and hearing for the national collection, and (4) obtaining valid assessments for both an English reading score for Spanish-speaking children and an assessment of their basic reading skills (e.g., letter recognition and sounds) in Spanish. The first measure will be obtained by expanding the English language screener from the ECLS-K and will permit reliable measurement of English reading from even the lowest performing students, as well as permitting measurement of the students’ gains in English reading from kindergarten through subsequent rounds. The second assessment will be obtained by translating the basic skills items in the English reading assessment into Spanish and will allow Spanish-speaking children to demonstrate their basic reading skills in their primary language.6
A purposive sample of 50 elementary schools representing different levels of urbanicity across five geographic areas will be selected to participate in the field test. The sampled schools will include public and private schools (both religious and nonreligious) that are not selected for the national study. A sample of approximately 4,350 children (900 English-speaking kindergarteners, 1,200 Spanish-speaking kindergarteners, 900 English-speaking first graders, 900 English-speaking second graders, and English-speaking 450 third graders) will be selected purposively to participate in the field test. All participating English-speaking children will complete a direct assessment that includes a reading subtest and either a math or science subtest and have their hearing and vision screened. Spanish-speaking kindergarteners will complete a direct Spanish language assessment as described in the preceding paragraph.
To reduce field test burden on the Spanish-speaking kindergarteners, a portion of the English reading measure will be pilot tested prior to the field test with 100 Spanish-speaking kindergarteners. If there is sufficient variability in the scores, then the same portion of the English reading measure would be included in the field test to estimate the psychometric parameters for Spanish-speaking children. However, if there is not sufficient variability in the English reading scores and the scores fall near or below what would be expected from “chance” level, then the same portion of the English reading measure would not be included in the field test because this would indicate that the items are too difficult to obtain reliable item parameters for these items for the Spanish-speaking children. As a result, the 1,200 Spanish-speaking children participating in the field test would only complete the Spanish basic reading skills assessment.
Three hundred teachers, two each from kindergarten, first, and second grade in each school, will be asked to participate in the fall 2009 field test. Teachers will be asked to complete individual rating scales for a child in their classroom. As previously discussed, the ratings scales contain items about the child’s skills in areas of language and literacy, mathematics, science, and the child’s social skills and behaviors.
The ECLS-K:11 will provide a rich data set that is designed to serve two purposes: descriptive and explanatory. It will provide descriptive data at a national level related to (1) children’s status at entry into kindergarten and at different points in their elementary school careers, (2) children’s transition into school and into the later elementary grade levels, and (3) children’s school progress through the fifth grade. Additionally, it will provide a rich data set that will enable researchers to test hypotheses about how a wide range of child, family, school, classroom, nonparental care and education provider, and community characteristics relate to success in school.
In addition to the descriptive objectives mentioned above, it will also be the goal of the data collection to describe accurately the diversity of young children with respect to demographic characteristics such as race/ethnicity, language, and school readiness. Such information is critical to establishing policies that are sensitive to this diversity. The longitudinal nature of the study will enable researchers to study cognitive and physical growth and socioemotional status, as well as relate trajectories of growth and change to variation in home and school experiences in the early grades. Ultimately, the ECLS-K:11 data set will be used by policymakers, educators, and researchers to consider the ways in which children are educated in our nation’s schools and to develop more effective approaches to education. It will be particularly valuable to policymakers, as the ECLS-K:11 is being launched a dozen years after the inception of the original ECLS-K. Analyses of the two cohorts will provide valuable information about the influences of changing policy and demographic environments on children’s early learning and development.
Today’s early education environment differs from that of the past in numerous ways. Examples of the many changes that have occurred within schools and within the larger society in recent years are presented in Exhibit A-1 and include changes at the policy, state, school, and societal levels. Numerous researchers have used the ECLS-K and ECLS-B to examine many of these topics. The widespread use of the study data is a testament to the importance of these two studies. At the same time, both have gaps that are perhaps inevitable because changes in policy, research, and society are often difficult to anticipate. The strengths of these earlier studies will be preserved by retaining much of the same content, while incorporating appropriate modifications so that ECLS-K:11 can be used to study a new cohort of children growing up in today’s circumstances.
Two important recent education policy developments since the development of the ECLS-K and ECLS-B are the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) signed into law in early 2002 and state-level efforts aimed at establishing state-funded pre-kindergarten programs. These policies have the potential to dramatically affect children’s experiences prior to school entry, school readiness, and progress through school.
NCLB affects families, classrooms, teachers, schools, and school districts throughout the country. It has clear expectations for student achievement; mandates annual assessments of all children in grades 3 through 8 to measure progress toward state-defined goals; has strong reporting requirements for schools, districts, and states; and has consequences when schools and school districts do not make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Title I schools and districts that do not make AYP for 2 consecutive years are identified for improvement and are to receive technical assistance to help them improve. Districts must offer all students in identified Title I schools the option of transferring to a non-identified school with transportation provided by the district. If a Title I school misses AYP for a third year, districts must offer low-income students the option of supplemental educational services from a state-approved provider. If a Title I school misses AYP for a fourth
Exhibit A-1. Examples of important developments for the ECLS-K:11
Policy changes
Changes in schools and challenges for schools
Demographic changes
Child Health
Scientific developments
Technological changes
|
year, districts must take corrective actions, which may include replacing school staff or implementing a new curriculum. Cross-cohort comparisons of the three ECLS studies (ECLS-B, ECLS-K, and ECLS-K:11) will provide important insights into the influence of NCLB on children’s lives. ECLS-K children entered school before the advent of NCLB. ECLS-B children entered school as states, districts, and schools were adjusting to meet the requirements of NCLB and to develop the required systems to demonstrate AYP. ECLS-K:11 children will be entering school after educational systems have had time to comply with NCLB requirements.
At the state level, policymakers are continuing efforts begun in the 1990s to develop state-funded pre-kindergarten programs for young children. These efforts are gaining additional impetus from the requirements of NCLB. Some states seek universal pre-kindergarten programs for all children; others seek to develop programs that target low-income children as a way to ensure that they have the same access as more advantaged children to early education and learning activities that will enable them to be ready for school. There are wide variations in state requirements for preschool and in the numbers of children enrolled. The ECLS-K:11 will collect basic information about preschool programs attended by the sampled children; parents will be asked about the type of preschool program attended (Head Start, other public preschool, private preschool), the years the child attended, and the state where the child attended preschool. Researchers will be able to link information about state preschool and early childhood policies to each child’s record, adding contextual information to an already rich data set. Although this information could not be used to make statements about specific states, it would enable researchers to examine whether state policies are associated with children’s transition into kindergarten and success in kindergarten and elementary school.
NCLB and state preschool efforts both emphasize the importance of using highly qualified teachers in the classroom. This emphasis on qualified teachers is exemplified by the bill that passed Congress in November 2007 requiring that by the year 2013 all federally-funded Head Start teachers have at least an associate’s degree and that at least half have a bachelor’s degree. Eighteen of the 38 states currently funding pre-kindergarten programs require the lead teacher in every classroom to have a bachelor’s degree and 20 require all lead teachers to have specialized training in pre-kindergarten education (Barnett, et al., 2006). NCLB has parallel requirements for K-12 schools. For example, it requires that all teachers of core subjects have a bachelor’s degree, full state certification, and demonstrated competence in each core academic subject they teach. The ECLS-K:11 will enable researchers to examine the qualifications of teachers of the kindergarten children.
Educational policymakers and researchers continue to debate the most appropriate ways to promote school readiness. Most experts agree that school readiness is a multi-faceted phenomenon and encompasses several domains of child development. In addition to cognitive development and pre-academic skills (e.g., letter and number recognition, emerging literacy), school readiness is conceptualized as involving the whole child, including health and physical well-being, language acquisition, social and emotional development, and interest in and enthusiasm for learning. It is therefore important for ECLS-K:11, like ECLS-K and ECLS-B, to capture information related to all of these domains to more fully understand how children’s early learning and development are being affected by shifts in policy and by other changes in children’s lives. For example, one effect of NCLB is a change in curricular emphasis in the early grades. NCLB emphasizes evidence-based early literacy activities that stress the development of specific literacy skills. Two recent initiatives, Reading First and Early Reading First, seek to lay the foundation for future school success by stressing the following five skills to enable children to become proficient readers:
Phonemic awareness: the ability to hear and identify sounds in spoken words;
Phonics: the relationship between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language;
Vocabulary: the words students must know to communicate effectively;
Fluency in reading: the capacity to read text accurately and quickly; and
Comprehension: the ability to understand and gain meaning from what is read.
NCLB and these reading programs view literacy as a skill that requires coherent skill-based instruction using scientifically proven curricula provided by highly qualified teachers to learn. By ensuring that the assessments and teacher questionnaires measure these emphasized skills, ECLS-K:11 can be used to assess the impact of NCLB on children’s emerging literacy and cognitive development. The focus of NCLB on early literacy skills has essentially shifted discussions of school readiness from the range of domains mentioned above to two: language development and general knowledge. It will be important to examine whether this shift has an effect on the other important dimensions of school readiness. For example, has the changing emphasis affected children’s social competence, approaches to learning, or other indicators of socioemotional development? Examination of such research questions will be possible through comparison of data from the ECLS-K and ECLS-K:11.
New research in the cognitive and neurological sciences is providing important insights into developmental processes associated with school readiness. Of particular interest is new research on the importance of executive functioning for learning and academic achievement (e.g., Blair and Razza, 2007; Posner and Rothbart, 2006). “Executive functioning” refers to a set of interdependent processes that work together to accomplish purposeful, goal-directed activities and include working memory, attention, inhibitory control, and other self-regulatory processes. Executive functioning processes work to regulate and orchestrate cognition, emotion, and behavior to enable a child to learn in the classroom. For example, executive control, which is associated with the prefrontal cortex, involves the ability to allocate attention, to hold information in working memory, and to withhold an inappropriate response (Casey, et al., 2000). Not only are these cognitive and behavioral processes predictive of reading and math achievement (Blair and Razza, 2007), but there is also emerging research that indicates that some of these cognitive processes are trainable (Rueda, et al., 2005; Klingberg, et al., 2005) and can be improved upon in regular public school classrooms without costly interventions (Diamond, et al., 2007).
Many other cognitive processes are necessary for learning and achievement. For example, learning, whether it involves reading comprehension, solving applied mathematics problems, or something else, involves the interaction between working memory and long-term memory and the formation of linkages between the two. ECLS-K:11 will be strengthened by obtaining measures (direct or indirect) that capture specific learning issues such as attention problems, memory problems, inability to withhold inappropriate responses, and language issues. In particular, little attention has been paid to differences in these areas across racial/ethnic subgroups or between low-income and other children (Noble, et al., 2005). ECLS-K:11 will provide information to allow for the investigation of such differences.
In addition to changing policies and approaches to early education and research, the U.S. is also undergoing demographic shifts in the composition of its population towards an increasingly diverse society. Continued high immigration rates, a relatively young immigrant population, high fertility rates among Hispanic women, and low fertility rates among the native born population mean that a substantial fraction of the child population has one or more immigrant parents. In 2004, approximately one in every four births was to a foreign-born mother (Martin, et al., 2006). Sixty percent of these births were to women of Hispanic origin (Martin, et al., 2006). The demographic shift is especially evident in the school-aged population. In 2005, 20 percent of children ages 5 to 17 spoke a language other than English at home (U.S. Department of Education, 2007 Indicator 6). Of those speaking a language other than English at home, 72 percent spoke Spanish, 14 percent spoke another Indo-European language, 11 percent spoke an Asian or Pacific Island language, and 4 percent spoke some other language at home (U.S. Department of Education, 2007 Indicator 6). Language barriers are not the only challenge for many of these children. Many, especially those with parents from Mexico and Central America, come from homes with lower parental education, larger families, and lower family income than native-born children (Larsen, 2004). Families from other cultures may have different normative expectations for how they should interact with schools and teachers. ECLS-K:11 will enable researchers to examine how schools and teachers are meeting the needs of these children and their families, how effective those efforts are, and how involved such families are in the school community.
Screenings for vision and hearing are being included in the ECLS-K:11 because they have high public utility and impairments can affect children's educational experiences and learning. Approximately 15 percent of U.S. children aged six to nineteen have a measurable hearing loss in one or both ears (Niskar et. al., 1998). Any degree of hearing loss can be educationally handicapping for children. Even children with mild to moderate hearing losses can miss up to 50 percent of classroom discussions. Unmanaged hearing loss in children can affect their speech and language development, academic capabilities and educational development, and self-image and social/emotional development (Cunningham, et al., 2003). The American Academy of Audiology recommends that all children be screened for hearing loss at least once during the preschool years. They also recommend that hearing loss be ruled out whenever a child is being considered for special education services (American Academy of Audiology, 1997). Inclusion of a hearing screening in the ECLS-K:11 will provide researchers with a unique ability to look at associations between hearing loss and a host of educational experiences and outcomes in a large-scale nationally representative study, to examine the emergence of hearing difficulties across time, and to see whether and how the timing of the emergence of hearing difficulties may be related to both environmental factors and educational experiences and outcomes.
Impairments in vision can also lead to learning and socio-emotional difficulties. About one in four school-aged children have vision problems including amblyopia (lazy eye), strabismus (crossed eye), and myopia (nearsightedness). Studies find that there are racial and ethnic differences in the prevalence and incidence of refractive disorders. A study of 2,523 children in Birmingham, Alabama found that 33.6 percent of Asian children and 36.9 percent of Hispanic children had astigmatism of 1D or more (Collaborative Longitudinal Evaluation of Ethnicity and Refractive Error Study Group, 2003). At this time, a vision screening is being included in the ECLS-K:11 field test to assess the feasibility of broadening the use of equipment for vision screening (the EVA) that has only been used in clinical settings. The EVA is much less expensive than other equipment more commonly used in broader settings; positive results from the field test could result in this equipment being made available and used more broadly, especially in school settings, which, in turn, would result in more school-age children being able to have their vision tested in schools. It may also lead to the inclusion of a vision screening in future rounds of the ECLS-K:11, thereby providing researchers with data to do the same types of analyses noted above for the data on hearing impairments.
Where feasible, available technology will be used to improve data quality and reduce respondent and school burden.
The ECLS-K:11 parent interviews and child assessments will be conducted using computer-assisted interviewing (CAI). Using CAI will increase data collection efficiency by permitting preloads of available data about the sampled schools and children, on-line editing, and complex question branching—all of which also reduce respondent burden with faster interviews and reduce the need to recontact respondents to obtain missing information (for example, in a situation where a field interviewer does not follow a skip pattern correctly and items that should be asked are not). Although field interviewers will conduct interviews with parents without telephones by making in-person visits to complete interviews, they will also conduct these interviews using CAI on laptop computers. The CAI system has important features that will improve the quality of the data and reduce the burden on respondents, as follows:
Initial Contact: The CAI system will guide the ECLS-K:11 field interviewer in making contact with the parent at the address provided by the school or with the child at the school and will include prompts to help the interviewer identify the correct respondent.
Routing the Direct Assessment: The CAI system will be programmed so the initial routing test at the beginning of each assessment subtest will be scored online by the computer and the appropriate second-stage test (i.e., the one corresponding to the child’s performance on the routing test) will be administered immediately. The benefits of such a two-stage instrument are increased adaptiveness, reduced burden for the child, and increased precision of measurement because the interviewers do not need to score the routing test and select the appropriate second-stage test themselves.
Skip Patterns: The CAI system automatically guides interviewers through the complex skip patterns in the parent interviews, reducing respondent burden and the potential for interviewer error and shortening the questionnaire administration time. This is because the respondent will not be asked inapplicable questions and the interviewers do not need to spend time determining which questions to ask.
Copying Responses: The CAI system will be programmed to copy responses from one item to another and from one instrument to another to prevent unnecessary repetition of questions and to aid in respondents’ recall. For example, information that is provided by the respondent early in the interview may be useful later in the interview; such information can be displayed on the screen or used as a wording fill for relevant questions to assist the respondent. Most importantly, information from the previous wave of data collection can be copied to the subsequent wave and verified, eliminating the need to collect the data again.
Time Intervals: The CAI system also provides automated time and date prompts that are very useful in longitudinal studies to assist respondents in remembering specific time periods. The interview can also provide the specific time frame for the interval between the previous and the current wave of data collection, to help respondents recollect information without repeating what they had given at the previous data collection period.
Receipt Control: The CAI system will provide for automatic receipt control in a flexible manner that will be used to produce status reports that allow timely and ongoing monitoring of the survey’s progress.
The use of a CAI system for the ECLS-K:11 is critical because of the intricate and sometimes difficult skip patterns that are part of complex survey instruments and because of the longitudinal nature of the data collection in which the same respondent is interviewed at multiple time points. Each data collection subsequent to the first will make use of information obtained at an earlier data collection, thereby reducing respondent burden and interview time because interviewers will not need to ask questions that are redundant or inappropriate given the information that is already known. Without CAI, these would be difficult instruments to administer over repeated measurement periods, and respondent burden would be increased.
A computer-based data management system will be used to manage the sample. The sample management system uses encrypted data transmission and networking technology to maintain timely information on respondents in the sample, including contact, tracking (i.e., being able to locate respondents over time), and case completion data. This system will be particularly important as children move from one school to another, both between fall and spring of kindergarten as well as over the course of ECLS-K:11 study. The use of sample management technology will maximize tracking efforts, which should have a positive effect on our ability to locate movers and achieve acceptable response rates.
The ECLS-K:11 will not be duplicative of other studies. The original ECLS-K is the only other study to collect as detailed and extensive information as the ECLS-K:11 for a cohort of young children and to follow them throughout elementary school. The ECLS-K:11 will extend the information obtained by the ECLS-K to a new cohort, will open up possibilities to investigate new research questions, and will allow important comparisons to be made between two kindergarten cohorts entering school a dozen years apart. In addition, it will collect data during the children’s second and fourth grade years, which the original ECLS-K did not.7
In preparation for the launch of the original ECLS-K, a review of other early childhood studies was conducted. At that time, the review found that a few studies have focused on children’s early learning environments (e.g., the Office of Policy and Planning’s National Transition Study, NCES’s National Household Education Surveys Program), on parent and family involvement in education (The National Household Education Surveys Program), on the structure of elementary schools (e.g., Schools and Staffing Survey), and have evaluated specific programs (The Longitudinal Evaluation of School Change and Performance; Chapter 1: Prospects Study). However, these studies either do not provide the longitudinal child-level data that are needed to study the relationships between the school experience and child developmental outcomes and growth or are concerned primarily with only certain segments of the child population.
More recently, a literature search was conducted to identify and review research studies with the same study purpose and goals as those proposed for the ECLS-K11. To be included in the search the research had to be (1) a survey-based study of populations with a sample of a thousand or more, (2) longitudinal in design, and (3) focused on children’s cognitive development in the elementary, middle, and secondary grades. Although similar studies were found, they were generally confined to limited geographic areas (e.g., Baltimore, Maryland; Greensboro, North Carolina) or, for the studies conducted on the national level (e.g., Prospects, Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth [NLSY Child Supplement]), were not based on probability samples of kindergartners. For example, Prospects began with first graders and targeted Title 1 recipients. NLSY79’s Child Supplement is based on the children of female sample members of a household-based 1979 sample of 14- to 21-year-olds. NELS: 88 and ELS: 2002 begin with students in the middle and high school grades. Another major finding of the review was that most studies used group-administered achievement tests, which can produce unreliable data for kindergarten and first grade children. The ECLS-K:11, however, will administer computerized adaptive child assessments in a one-on-one setting.
One additional study deserves further examination due to its similarities to the ECLS-K:11. The Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) consists of several cohorts of Head Start children beginning with a 1997 cohort. This cohort is a sample of 3- and 4-year olds enrolled in Head Start in fall 1997. These children were followed each year through spring 2001 when most of them were completing first grade. The second cohort is a sample of 3- and 4-year olds enrolled in Head Start in fall 2000; these children were followed until they completed their kindergarten year. Data from two other cohorts of Head Start children have been collected, starting in fall 2003 and again in fall 2006. Each of these cohorts was followed until the children completed their kindergarten year. Data collection for a new, fifth cohort of Head Start children is planned to start in fall 2009. However, FACES does not follow the progress of children in school beyond kindergarten or first grade, and the samples are limited to children served by Head Start.
The respondents of ECLS-K:11 include teachers and school administrators. Private, not-for-profit, and proprietary elementary schools may be drawn into the sample. To reduce the perceived burden, the contractor will provide assistance to these schools as needed. These proprietary and nonprofit schools will also benefit from the study’s other burden-reducing strategies (e.g., instruction kits, toll-free help lines, and prepaid business return envelopes), which were designed for all types of schools.
This submission describes and requests approval for the field test and base year data collection of the ECLS-K:11. The base year data collection will take place in fall 2010 and spring 2011, preceded by a field test in fall 2009. One of the main goals of the ECLS-K:11 is to measure change in children’s cognitive growth and noncognitive status, as well as changes in the contextual characteristics (i.e., school, classroom, family, and community factors) that affect growth. To measure change, baseline information must be collected and compared with data collected in periodic followups that are linked to the rates of change for school children and their environments.
For the national data collection, beginning-of-the-school-year data collection is needed in order to obtain baseline data on children prior to, or at the very beginning of, their exposure to the influences of the school. Through direct and indirect assessments, the baseline study will provide measures of the skills, attributes, and knowledge of children as they enter school for the first time. The data collected at the end of the year will be used to examine changes in children after they have experienced nearly a year of kindergarten. Currently, the study design calls for administration of followup instruments each spring from first through fifth grade. This frequency of data collection is linked to the rate of change that is expected for children of this age and the desire to capture information about children as critical events and transitions are occurring, rather than measuring these events retrospectively. Without data collection followups, the study of children’s cognitive and social development is hindered.
The field test described in this submission will mirror the national data collection’s single data collection points for kindergarten though second grade. However, the field test departs from the national data collection because it is not longitudinal in nature. Instead of following a sample of kindergartners and yearly administering grade‑specific instruments to the children and teachers, the field test will collect statistics on the cognitive assessments conducted with children in kindergarten, first, second, and third grades and will field teacher questionnaires for kindergarten, first, and second grade teachers. This field test is needed to develop scalable items that measure growth through second grade. The field test will also test the feasibility of screening children’s vision and hearing in schools.
No special circumstances for this information collection are anticipated.
NCES has sought consultation with a range of outside agencies over the life of the ECLS‑K . During the early development of the ECLS-K, project staff met with representatives from a wide range of Federal agencies with an interest in the care and well-being of children. The goal of this activity was to identify policy and research issues and data needs. See Table A-1 for the representatives consulted for the ECLS-K and ECLS-K:11.
Project staff also consulted several other organizations (see Table A-2) that have an interest in the care, well-being, and education of young children. The goal of this activity was again to identify policy and research issues and data needs.
Several of the early consultations with government agencies have resulted in interagency agreements funding supplemental studies. Similar to its predecessor, the ECLS-K:11 represents a collaborative effort by education, health, and human services agencies. The National Center for Education Statistics in the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education in partnership with other federal agencies supports the development of the core design of the ECLS-K:11. Partner agencies continuing to support supplemental studies that enrich the ECLS-K:11 include the Economic Research Services of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Center for Special Education Research in the Institute of Education Services of the U.S. Department of Education, and the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. New agency partners to the ECLS-K:11 include the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders and the National Eye Institute at the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In preparation for the ECLS-K:11, the design contractor is assembling expert panels (Technical Review Panel (TRP) and Content Review Panels (CRP)) to provide review and comment on the issues related to the development of the study and survey instruments. The members include experts in research, policy making, and practice in the fields of early childhood education and development, elementary schools, health, research methodology, special populations, and assessment. See Table A-3 for the ECLS-K:11 TRP members. The TRP has had one meeting, held in November 2008. The meeting focused on major design and content issues, such as periodicity, the benefits of including an assessment of science in kindergarten, the assessment of executive functioning and possible measures for it, and the content of a native language assessment for English language learners. This OMB submission reflects expert input on these major design and content issues. The TRP members
Mary Jo Lynch, Ph.D. American Library Association Office of Research and Statistics
Keith W. Mielkek, Ph.D. Children’s Television Workshop
Lynson Bobo Project Associate Resource Center on Educational Equity Council of Chief State School Officers
Evelyn Moore Erica Tollett National Black Child Development Institute |
Susan Bredekamp Barbara Willer National Association for the Education of Young Children
June Million, Sally McConnell, Louanne Wheeler National Association of Elementary School Principals
Thomas Schultz Director, Center for Education Services for Young Learners National Association of State Boards of Education
|
Karl Alexander Department of Sociology Johns Hopkins University
Jim Bauman Center for Applied Linguistics Washington, DC
Maureen Black Growth and Nutrition Department University of Maryland Medical Center
Joanne Carlisle School of Education University of Michigan
Janet Fischel State University of New York at Stony Brook & University Medical Center |
Joan Lombardi The Children’s Project Public Policy Institute and Department of Psychology Georgetown University
Fred Morrison Department of Psychology University of Michigan
Charlotte Patterson Department of Psychology University of Virginia
Robert Pianta The Center for Advanced Teaching and Learning University of Virginia
Kit Viator Massachusetts Department of Education |
also provided suggestions for specific questionnaire items to be included in the instruments in the full-scale collection. The request for approval that will be submitted to OMB after the field test will include final instruments that take into account the expert recommendations on specific questionnaire items.
A panel of experts (i.e., the CRP) will be consulted to provide critical review of the assessment instruments. In their review, panel members will focus on the content coverage of the assessments and the relationship of assessment items to elementary school curricula. These experts will review the items that will be field tested to construct the ECLS-K:11 two-stage adaptive test. The ECLS-K:11 CRP meetings will be held in spring 2009. See Table A-4 for the prospective ECLS-K:11 CRP members.
Reading Panel |
|
John Guthrie University of Maryland
Paul van den Broek University of Minnesota |
Barbara Wasik University of North Carolina |
Math Panel |
|
Doug Clements State University of New York, Buffalo
Deborah L. Ball University of Michigan |
Mary Muri Wesleyan University
Prentice Starkey University of California, Berkeley
|
Science Panel |
|
Audrey Champagne University at Albany, State University of New York |
Christine Y. O’Sullivan Science Consultant |
Obtaining high response rates is critical for all longitudinal studies. At the start of a longitudinal data collection, it is essential to establish the good will of respondents and to demonstrate that we value their participation in the study. Good will can be established by using well-designed respondent materials that inform respondents about the goals of the study and their role in it, the field staff establishing a rapport with the respondents, professionalism among the field staff, and a small token incentive. The incentive plan for ECLS-K:11 is similar to the approach approved by OMB for use in ECLS-K. The plan is designed to get respondents to “buy into” or believe in the merits of the study and thereby encourage high response rates.
High levels of school participation are integral to the success of the study. Without a school’s cooperation, there can be no school, teacher, or child data collection activity for that facility. NCES recognizes that administrators will assess the burden level before agreeing to participate. To offset this perceived burden, NCES intends to continue its use of strategies that have worked successfully on three other major NCES studies (High School and Beyond, National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, and Education Longitudinal Study of 2002) and their in-school followup studies and that were also used in later collections of the ECLS-K with OMB’s approval. It is important to provide schools with an incentive because the study asks a lot of them, including to allow field interviewers to be in their schools for up to three days, to provide a contact person and space for the children to be assessed, to remove children from their normal classes while they are tested, and to obtain information about the school and the children. Given the many demands and outside pressures that schools face, it is essential that they see that we understand the burden we are placing on them and that we value their participation. We propose to remunerate schools $200 per school. An honorarium check in the amount of $200 will be mailed to each school at the end of spring data collection along with a thank you note thanking the school for its participation.
To build response rates, we propose to remunerate school administrators in appreciation for their completing the school questionnaire. In ECLS-K, the field period had to be extended for both kindergarten and first grade to build adequate response rates for the school administrator questionnaire to meet NCES’ goals. Providing school administrators with an incentive will reduce the need to extend the field period and help avoid delays in data delivery. We will offer school administrators a $25 incentive, the same amount that was given to school administrators during the eighth grade round of the ECLS-K conducted in 2007, attached to the school administrator questionnaire during the spring data collection. In the eight-grade round, a response rate of 93.3 percent was achieved for the school administrator questionnaire.
In the base year of the ECLS-K, teachers received $5 per child for completing the child rating form because they were acting as data collectors, recording their observations of their kindergarteners on teacher rating scale forms. The check was mailed to them upon receipt of the completed questionnaires. Beginning with the third-grade round of collection, teachers were offered $7 per child rating form. For the base year data collection of the ECLS-K:11, teachers will be offered $7 per child rating form to adjust for inflation. On average, teachers will have 6 kindergarteners selected from their classrooms for two rounds of kindergarten data collection. Thus, a teacher with 6 pupils would receive $7 for each child for each round of data collection, resulting in a total remuneration of $84 for participating in the study. The incentives will be attached to the package of instruments the teachers receive in the fall and in the spring. NCES began the practice of providing the teacher incentive up-front in the fifth grade round of the ECLS-K, which teachers appreciated and responded positively to by completing their questionnaires on time, resulting in high response rates. Given the unusual burden of ECLS-K and our experience in other school-based, longitudinal studies with high institutional and respondent burden, NCES believes that remuneration must be a part of data collection for a study such as this. We attribute the high questionnaire response rates achieved in the eighth grade ECLS-K collection (school administrator at 93.3%; teacher questionnaire at 95.5%; special education teacher questionnaire at 94.2%) in part to the provided incentives.
School coordinators act as the liaison with the school for the study and, as such, they play a very important role in the ECLS-K:11. They help to enroll children in the study, notify parents and obtain consent as necessary, notify teachers, arrange for assessment logistics for fall and spring, and collect teacher, school administrator, and special education teacher questionnaires in fall and spring. For this reason, school coordinators will be offered a $25 incentive. The $25 checks will be attached to the “Welcome” letters mailed to the coordinators in the fall. We offered the same incentive to the school coordinators during the eighth grade round of ECLS-K data collection conducted in 2007.
The wrap-around early care and education providers of children will be offered $35 to compensate them for their participation in the study. With parental permission, interviewers will conduct a 30- to 40- minute computer assisted telephone interview with home and center-based providers. Center directors will participate in a 10-minute interview. The interview includes sections querying the curriculum, classroom practices, provider characteristics, and attitudes as well as an evaluation of the ECLS-K:11 children’s academic and behavioral competence. The incentive for the providers is higher than the teacher incentive because they have to spend time on the telephone for the interview as opposed to completing a questionnaire at their own convenience.
During the field test, two kindergarten teachers, two first grade teachers, and two second grade teachers in each school will be asked to complete questionnaires. We propose to remunerate these teachers $7 for each child rating form they receive. We will ask each teacher to complete five child-rating forms. We will ask schools to provide a school coordinator whose responsibilities are described above; we recommend offering the coordinators $25 to compensate them for their time and effort.
The ECLS-K:11 plan for ensuring the confidentiality of the project conforms with the following federal regulations and policies: the Privacy Act of 1974 (5 U.S.C. 552a), Privacy Act Regulations (34 CFR Part 5b), the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (P.L.100-297 Title I, Part C, Sec. 183, as amended), the Computer Security Act of 1987, NCES Restricted-Use Data Procedures Manual, and the NCES Standards and Policies.
All respondents who participate in research under this clearance will be informed that the information they provide will be protected from disclosure to the fullest extent allowable under law and that their participation is voluntary. This information will be provided to parents as the guardians for their children. All respondents receive an introductory letter that explains NCES’s and the contractor’s adherence to confidentiality (see Appendix F). The parent consent form also includes an explanation of NCES’s and the contractor’s adherence to confidentiality (see Appendix F). This responsibility to protect data from disclosure also will be conveyed to state, district, and other school officials at the time their cooperation is sought.
During any personal or telephone interviewing, respondents will be asked if they received the introductory letter. If the respondent does not recall the letter, the interviewer will summarize the key elements of the data protection assurances; namely, that data will be combined to produce statistical reports, that no data will be published that link the respondent to his/her responses; participation is voluntary; and there is federal statute that protects the data from disclosure to the fullest extent allowable under law (P.L.100-297 Title I, Part C, Sec. 183, as amended).
All data collection staff must read and sign the contractor’s professional ethics statement as well as the Affidavit of Nondisclosure required by NCES. In addition, all contractor staff including data collection staff with access to individual identifying data are required to submit personal screening documents in compliance with ACS Directive (OM:5-101).
After data collection, personally identifiable data are protected through the use of password-protected data files and the coding of responses so that no one individual respondent can be identified (specifically or by deduction) through reported variables in the public access data files. NCES monitors the conduct of the contractor to ensure that the confidentiality of the data is not breached. A separate locator database for the sample members is maintained in a secure location.
In addition, the contractor will conduct a thorough disclosure analysis of the ECLS-K:11 data when preparing the public-use files. This analysis will ensure that NCES has fully complied with the confidentiality provisions contained in PL 100-297. To protect the privacy of respondents as required by PL 100-297, respondents with high disclosure risk will be identified and data that can potentially be used to identify those respondents will be masked.
All contractor staff members working on the ECLS-K:11 project or having access to the data (including monitoring of interviews and assessments) are required to sign the NCES Affidavit of Nondisclosure (Exhibit A-2) and a Confidentiality Pledge (Exhibit A-3). They also are required to complete mandatory training on data confidentiality and the safehandling of data. The contractor will keeps the original notarized affidavits on file and submit PDF copies of all affidavits to NCES quarterly. In addition, these staff will complete background screening in compliance with ACS Directive (OM:5-101).
During the course of data collection, interviewers will be equipped with laptop computers, which store any necessary preloaded data, as well as the information collected during the course of the interviewing for that round. The interviewers will be instructed to keep the computers and any hard-copy case materials in a secure place in their homes when they are not being used. When the interviewer is out collecting interview or assessment data, he or she is instructed to keep all materials and the computer in his/her possession at all times. When driving a car to or from his/her appointments, the computer and all materials will be locked out of sight, so as not to provide an
Affidavit of Nondisclosure
____________________________________ __________________________________
(Job Title) (Date Assigned to Work with NCES Data)
____________________________________
(Organization, State or Local Agency Name)
____________________________________ ________________________________
(Organization or Agency Address) (NCES Database or File Containing
Individually Identifiable Information*)
I, __________________________________ , do solemnly swear (or affirm) that when given access to the subject NCES database or file, I will not -
(i) use or reveal any individually identifiable information furnished, acquired, retrieved or assembled by me or others, under the provisions of Section 183 of the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-279) and Title V, subtitle A of the E-Government Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-347) for any purpose other than statistical purposes specified in the NCES survey, project or contract;
(ii) make any disclosure or publication whereby a sample unit or survey respondent (including students and schools) could be identified or the data furnished by or related to any particular person or school under these sections could be identified; or
(iii) permit anyone other than the individuals authorized by the Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics to examine the individual reports.
___________________________________
(Signature)
[The penalty for unlawful disclosure is a fine of not more than $250,000 (under 18 U.S.C. 3571) or imprisonment for not more than five years (under 18 U.S.C. 3559), or both. The word "swear" should be stricken out when a person elects to affirm the affidavit rather than to swear to it.]
City/County of _________________ Commonwealth/State of ________________ .
Sworn to and subscribed before me this _______________ day of
_______________, 20________ . Witness my hand and official Seal.
____________________________________
(Notary Public/Seal) My commission expires__________________ .
* Request all subsequent follow-up data that may be needed. This form cannot be amended by NCES, so access to databases not listed will require submitting additional notarized Affidavits. Form last revised 02/08/07
EMPLOYEE OR CONTRACTOR’S ASSURANCE OF CONFIDENTIALITY OF SURVEY DATA
Statement of Policy
{Contractor} is firmly committed to the principle that the confidentiality of individual data obtained through {Contractor} surveys must be protected. This principle holds whether or not any specific guarantee of confidentiality was given at time of interview (or self-response), or whether or not there are specific contractual obligations to the client. When guarantees have been given or contractual obligations regarding confidentiality have been entered into, they may impose additional requirements which are to be adhered to strictly.
Procedures for Maintaining Confidentiality
1. All {Contractor} employees and field workers shall sign this assurance of confidentiality. This assurance may be superseded by another assurance for a particular project.
2. Field workers shall keep completely confidential the names of respondents, all information or opinions collected in the course of interviews, and any information about respondents learned incidentally during field work. Field workers shall exercise reasonable caution to prevent access by others to survey data in their possession.
3. Unless specifically instructed otherwise for a particular project, an employee or field worker, upon encountering a respondent or information pertaining to a respondent that s/he knows personally, shall immediately terminate the activity and contact her/his supervisor for instructions.
4. Survey data containing personal identifiers in {Contractor} offices shall be kept in a locked container or a locked room when not being used each working day in routine survey activities. Reasonable caution shall be exercised in limiting access to survey data to only those persons who are working on the specific project and who have been instructed in the applicable confidentiality requirements for that project.
Where survey data have been determined to be particularly sensitive by the Corporate Officer in charge of the project or the President of {Contractor}, such survey data shall be kept in locked containers or in a locked room except when actually being used and attended by a staff member who has signed this pledge.
5. Ordinarily, serial numbers shall be assigned to respondents prior to creating a machine-processible record and identifiers such as name, address, and Social Security number shall not, ordinarily, be a part of the machine record. When identifiers are part of the machine data record, {Contractor’s Manager of Data Processing} shall be responsible for determining adequate confidentiality measures in consultation with the project director. When a separate file is set up containing identifiers or linkage information which could be used to identify data records, this separate file shall be kept locked up when not actually being used each day in routine survey activities.
6. When records with identifiers are to be transmitted to another party, such as for keypunching or key taping, the other party shall be informed of these procedures and shall sign an Assurance of Confidentiality form.
7. Each project director shall be responsible for ensuring that all personnel and contractors involved in handling survey data on a project are instructed in these procedures throughout the period of survey performance. When there are specific contractual obligations to the client regarding confidentiality, the project director shall develop additional procedures to comply with these obligations and shall instruct field staff, clerical staff, consultants, and any other persons who work on the project in these additional procedures. At the end of the period of survey performance, the project director shall arrange for proper storage or disposition of survey data including any particular contractual requirements for storage or disposition. When required to turn over survey data to our clients, we must provide proper safeguards to ensure confidentiality up to the time of delivery.
8. Project directors shall ensure that survey practices adhere to the provisions of the U.S. Privacy Act of 1974, and any additional relevant laws that are specified in the contract,with regard to surveys of individuals for the Federal Government. Project directors must ensure that procedures are established in each survey to inform each respondent of the authority for the survey, the purpose and use of the survey, the voluntary nature of the survey (where applicable), and the effects on the respondents, if any, of not responding.
PLEDGE
I hereby certify that I have carefully read and will cooperate fully with the above procedures. I will keep completely confidential all information arising from surveys concerning individual respondents to which I gain access. I will not discuss, disclose, disseminate, or provide access to survey data and identifiers except as authorized by {Contractor}. In addition, I will comply with any additional procedures established by {Contractor} for a particular contract. I will devote my best efforts to ensure that there is compliance with the required procedures by personnel whom I supervise. I understand that violation of this pledge is sufficient grounds for disciplinary action, including dismissal. I also understand that violation of the privacy rights of individuals through such unauthorized discussion, disclosure, dissemination, or access may make me subject to criminal or civil penalties. I give my personal pledge that I shall abide by this assurance of confidentiality.
Signature
inviting opportunity for burglary. The interviewers will be instructed both to transmit the electronic data for a case to a central database and to mail the hard-copy materials on the same day the case is completed. Any data transmitted electronically will be encrypted during transmission.
The laptop configuration will be designed with security and confidentiality considerations in mind. In order to access any of the applications, the interviewer must enter a project-specific password and an interviewer identification code, both of which are checked against encrypted versions of the same data; if the password or interviewer identification code is entered incorrectly, the interviewer is “locked out” of the application. In addition to the database design described above, in which data identifying persons or places are kept in separate files from the survey data items, all data files will be encrypted on the computer hard disk.
In the event of a hardware failure in the field, the home office will swap the interviewer’s laptop for a new one. The contractor will maintain a supply of “hot spares,” i.e., laptop computers loaded with all necessary ECLS-K:11 software, which require only the specific interviewer’s identification code and assignment before being sent out.
All mailing—of respondent materials, laptops, hard-copy case materials—will be done using Federal Express, which has a sophisticated tracking system designed to locate any misdirected packages.
Finally, all computer assisted interviewing (CAI) applications will have an audit trail of the case data on the hard disk. This is so that if the main data files are corrupted, the data can be reconstructed from the audit trails.
The ECLS-K:11 is a voluntary study, and no persons are required to respond to the questionnaires or to participate in the assessments. In addition, respondents may decline to answer any question they are asked. This voluntary aspect of the survey is clearly stated in the advance letter mailed to respondents and the study brochure, and it is stressed in interviewer training.
The following describes the general nature of the national data collection instruments.
School Administrator Questionnaires. These are not of a sensitive nature and should not pose a problem to respondents.
Teacher Rating Scale Forms. The information collected in these forms could be regarded as sensitive, because the teacher is asked to rate each sampled child’s ability to exercise self-control, interact with others, resolve conflict, and participate in group activities. Other questions ask about the child’s problem behaviors and learning disposition (e.g., curiosity, self-direction, inventiveness). Because schools often emphasize different skills and concepts, teachers will also be asked to rate the child’s performance in the curricular areas and domains that are included in the cognitive assessments (e.g., language skills, quantitative skills, knowledge of the physical, social, and biological worlds).
The purpose of the teacher ratings of children is both to extend the range of domains assessed (e.g., by gathering information about socioemotional development and adaptation to school) and to deepen our understanding of domains by tapping them in multiple ways (e.g., by gathering information on cognitive development that will complement results of the direct assessment). Teacher assessments of children’s socioemotional skills will provide several kinds of information. First, teachers will supply information about children’s social skills (including ability to exercise self-control, interact with others, resolve conflict, and participate in group activities); problem behaviors (e.g., fighting, bullying, arguing, anger, depression, low self-esteem, impulsiveness); and learning dispositions (e.g., curiosity, self-direction, inventiveness). In addition, teachers will be asked to provide information about the subject-specific cognitive skills and development of children, including both expressive and receptive aspects of language, quantitative skills, and knowledge of the physical, social, and biological worlds.
Direct Cognitive Assessments and Questionnaires. The direct cognitive assessments are essential in determining children’s performance levels at the time they enter school and changes in their performance as they progress through school. Because schools often use different standards in their own assessments of children, a uniform set of assessment instruments and procedures is needed for the ECLS‑K:11. The items to be included in the direct cognitive assessments are not themselves sensitive in nature. However, direct assessments of children do raise certain concerns about the assessment procedures to be used. Of primary concern is the length of the assessments. The cognitive assessments are designed to be administered within a 60-minute time period, on average. NCES has developed instruments appropriate to the ages of the participating children, and every effort will be made to staff the study with field assessors who have prior experience in working with children to conduct the direct assessments. Issues specific to working with children will also figure prominently in assessor training.
During the assessment session, children also will be asked questions about their school experience, such as how well they like school, how well they like their teacher, and how well they get along with other children at school. Some questions may be seen as sensitive (e.g., how well they get along with other children at school, things in school that they do not like) Questions such as these have been used successfully in other studies with similarly-aged children and provide researchers with valuable information on children’s experience in school (e.g., Pallas, Entwisle, Alexander, & Cadigan, 1987; Alexander, Entwisle, & Dauber, 2003). Questions will be designed to be appropriate to the ages of the children, and every effort will be made to staff the study with field assessors who have prior experience in working with children. As in the direct assessment, these questions are voluntary and children will be told that they do not have to answer them.
Parent Questionnaires. Several topics that will be addressed in the parent questionnaire are sensitive in nature. Questions about family income, child-rearing and disciplinary practices, parents’ judgments about their children’s academic skills and abilities, household food sufficiency, and marital satisfaction will be included in the parent questionnaire.
Prior research indicates that each of these topics is correlated with children’s achievement and helps to predict children’s preparedness for and success in school. Collecting data on these topics will allow researchers to go beyond descriptive analyses of variation in children’s performance by basic background characteristics such as race/ethnicity and sex. Researchers will be able to test hypotheses about how a wide range of family characteristics relate to early success in school. Therefore, it is important to include questions on the sensitive topics listed above in the parent questionnaires. Like other study participants, parents will be told that they can refuse to answer any question they wish.
Results from previous rounds of data collection showed that there were very low levels of missing data in the parent interviews. For example, in ECLS-K Round 7 (i.e., the eighth grade wave), response rates for sensitive items such as parent income (96.3%) and marital satisfaction (97.8%) were both above 95 percent.
Additionally, because it is imperative that respondents can be found at a later date for follow-up collections in a longitudinal study, the ECLS-K:11 interview protocol requests locating information from parents to be used to contact them for later rounds of the study. The locating information includes telephone numbers, addresses, and the names of individuals who would always know the whereabouts of the respondents.
Children’s Participation in Wrap-Around Care Programs (WECEP). Within the questions about wrap-around care and education, there is one set of questions that could be deemed sensitive by some child care providers. Child care providers may feel that rating statements regarding their satisfaction with their work (e.g., I really enjoy my present teaching job/child care position) are sensitive in nature. These items are included because prior research (e.g., Berk, 1985; Goelman et al., 2000; Bollin, 1993) indicates that caregiver satisfaction may be associated with relevant constructs such as the quality of care that children receive, staff retention and stability, and child care resources. Prior to their participation, child care providers will be informed and assured that their information will be protected from disclosures to the fullest extent allowable under law and that their responses will not be shared with their employers or the parents of their children.
The estimated respondent burden for the field test and national data collection data collection is summarized here and in Tables A-5 and A-6. Included in these estimates, where appropriate, is the time that a respondent would need to gather and compile the data and the clerical time needed to fill out the form.
Field Test |
|||||||
Respondent type |
Sample n |
Response rate/ selection rate |
Number of Respondents |
Hours per instrument |
Number of instruments per respondent |
Total Hours |
Total number of responses |
Teacher: Rating Scales |
300 |
100 |
300 |
.17 |
5 |
255 |
1,500 |
Child: Direct Assessment |
4,350 |
100 |
4,350 |
1.00 |
1 |
4,350 |
4,350 |
Child: Vision Screening |
3,150 |
100 |
3,150 |
.25 |
1 |
788 |
3,150 |
Child: Hearing Screening |
3,150 |
100 |
3,150 |
.50 |
1 |
1,575 |
3,150 |
Study Total |
|
NA |
4,6501 |
NA |
NA |
6,968 |
12,150 |
NA Not Applicable
1 Total number of respondents represents the total number of respondents with no duplication. The assessments and screenings will be administered to the 3,150 English-speaking children; 1,200 Spanish-speaking kindergarteners will be assessed but not screened.
For the teacher rating scales, 300 teachers will complete 5 teacher rating scales for 5 random children in his/her classroom, selected by the teacher, for a total of 1,500 children.
As described in section A.1.d, prior to the field test, the English reading measure for Spanish-speaking children will be pilot tested prior to the field test with 100 Spanish-speaking kindergarteners. If there is low variability on the English reading measure scores, then the measure will not be included in the field test. As a result, the field test burden on the 1,200 Spanish-speaking children would be lower because they would only be administered the Spanish basic reading skills assessment.
National Data Collection |
|||||||
Respondent type |
Sample n |
Response rate/
|
Number of respondents |
Hours per instrument |
Number of instruments per respondent |
Total hours |
Total number of responses |
Fall Direct Assessment |
21,600 |
.90 |
19,440 |
1.00 |
1 |
19,440 |
19,440 |
Fall Parent Interview |
21,600 |
.90 |
19,440 |
0.50 |
1 |
9,720 |
19,440 |
Fall Teacher Questionnaire (TQA) |
3,600 |
.90 |
3,240 |
0.50 |
1 |
1,620 |
3,240 |
Fall Teacher Child-level Questionnaire (TQC) |
3,600 |
.90 |
3,240 |
0.33 |
6 |
6,415 |
19,440 |
Prompting for TQs |
3,600 |
.90 |
3,240 |
0.20 |
NA |
648 |
3,240 |
Spring Direct Assessment |
21,600 |
.90 |
19,440 |
1.00 |
|
19,440 |
19,440 |
Spring Hearing Screening |
21,600 |
.90 |
19,440 |
0.50 |
1 |
9,720 |
19,440 |
Spring Parent Interview |
21,600 |
.90 |
19,440 |
0.60 |
1 |
11,664 |
19,440 |
Spring School Administrator Questionnaires (SAQ) |
900 |
.90 |
810 |
1.00 |
1 |
810 |
810 |
Spring Teacher Questionnaire (TQB) |
3,600 |
.90 |
3,240 |
0.50 |
1 |
1,620 |
3,240 |
Spring Teacher Child-level Questionnaire (TQC) |
3,600 |
.90 |
3,240 |
0.33 |
6 |
6,415 |
19,440 |
Spring Special Education Teacher Questionnaire (SPA) |
900 |
.90 |
810 |
0.50 |
1 |
405 |
810 |
Spring Special Education Teacher Child-level Questionnaire (SPB) |
900 |
.90 |
810 |
0.33 |
1.9 |
508 |
1,539 |
Prompting for SAQs, TQs, SPs |
5,400 |
.90 |
4,860 |
0.20 |
NA |
972 |
4,860 |
Child Care Provider Questionnaire (WECEP) |
7,778 |
.90 |
7,000 |
0.67 |
1 |
4,690 |
7,000 |
Study Total |
56,3781 |
NA |
50,7402 |
NA |
NA |
94,087 |
160,819 |
NA Not applicable
1 Total sample n represents the total sample size with no duplication on the number of listed instruments each respective respondent is asked to complete.
2 Total number of respondents represents the total number of respondents with no duplication on the number of listed instruments each respective respondent is asked to complete.
The national data collection includes direct cognitive assessments and hearing screening with children; parent interviews; regular classroom teacher self-administrated questionnaires; classroom teacher rating scales of children; special education teacher self-administrated questionnaires; special education teacher ratings of children receiving services; school administrator self-administered questionnaires; and collection of data from child care providers.
The field test includes direct cognitive assessments and vision and hearing screenings with children and teacher ratings of children. For the field test, NCES requests clearance for 4,650 respondents and 6,968 burden hours. This translates to a cost amount of $5,375 for the teacher ratings8; child assessments and screenings are not included in the calculation of cost.
The total number of respondents for the national data collection, i.e., school administrators, teachers, children, parents, and child care providers, without duplication included in the estimate is 50,740.9 The fall and spring kindergarten teacher, parent, school administrator, and child care provider respondent burden translates into a cost amount of $958,866 for 45,487 hours.Error: Reference source not found
Although the time children will spend completing the assessments and having their hearing and vision screened are included in tables A-5 and A-6, this time has not been included in the total estimated burden. To further clarify the timings, the 1.75 burden hours in the field test are estimated for the cognitive assessments (1.00), the vision screening (.25), and the hearing screening (.50). The 1.00 burden hours for fall full scale is for the cognitive assessment only and the 1.5 burden hours for the spring full scale is for the cognitive assessment (1.00) and hearing screening (.50). At this time there are no definitive plans to conduct the vision screening in the kindergarten full scale data collection, though we may request approval for its inclusion in future rounds, pending the outcome of the feasibility study in the field test.
The timings provided for the ECLS-K:11 child assessment are estimates of the maximum amount of time we expect the assessments could take. The burden of the field test child assessments is fairly well established based on past experience in the ECLS-K. However, the burden of the two screenings is not well established in a study of this size. During the course of the field test, we will be identifying ways to make the protocol more efficient, and thus less burdensome. We are sensitive to the issue of burden for children, and we do intend to monitor how they behave during the screenings, specifically whether it is too much for them after they complete the cognitive assessments. We have precedent from the ECLS-K field tests where we have initiated a stopping rule if the assessment is running too long for children. We will use the same procedures for the ECLS-K:11. Additionally, if the field test shows that the burden appears to be too great for most children to handle, we will not include the hearing screening in the full scale collection.
As a point of comparison for the burden in the ECLS-K:11, the average burden in ECLS-K ranged from 45 to 60 minutes with 60 minutes being the upper limit. The additional time in ECLS-K:11 is for activities related to the vision and hearing screening. In the kindergarten collection of the ECLS-B, the total assessment time was approximately 43 minutes (33 minutes for the cognitive assessments and another 10 minutes to assess gross and fine motor skills and take physical measurements (height, weight, middle-upper-arm circumference, and head circumference (for children born with very low birth weight only)). The burden in the preschool round of collection for the ECLS-B was higher at about 1 hour and 5 minutes. The cognitive assessments took approximately 45 minutes, the direct assessment of socioemotional functioning was 10 minutes, and the motor skills and physical assessments were 10 minutes.
The timings for child assessments in selected large-scale studies conducted by organizations other than NCES that include a population of children close in age to the children who will be included in the ECLS-K:11 range from 40 minutes to 60 minutes. The Special Education Elementary Longitudinal Study (SEELS) had the highest child burden at 60 minutes, though this burden included both direct child assessments and a short student questionnaire. The timings for The Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES), the Pre-elementary Education Longitudinal Study (PEELS), and the Head Start Impact Study (HSIS) were 40 minutes, 40 minutes, and 55 minutes, respectively, for the cognitive assessments. The cognitive assessments in the ECLS-K:11 are expected to take about as long as the cognitive assessments in these other studies. The additional hearing and vision screenings are not expected to be as demanding on the child and do not require the same degree of sustained attention as the cognitive assessment; some screening activities included in the field test do not require a response from the child at all. The screening tasks will offer a break from the assessment situation in that the child will be able to move around and participate in novel activities. However, as noted above, study staff will stop the assessment and screening activities if they run too long for children.
In summary, NCES is requesting clearance for a field test with 4,650 respondents and 6,968 hours and a full scale study with 50,740 respondents and 94,087 hours. The total requested for this information clearance is 101,055 hours and 55,390 respondents.
There are no costs to the respondents to participate beyond the time needed to answer the questionnaires, for teachers to collect assessment data, and for the children to participate in the cognitive assessments. No equipment, printing, or postage charges will be incurred by the participants.
This information collection activity has been developed in performance of NCES contract ED-04-CO-0059/0023. The period of performance for this ECLS-K:11 contract, which includes the kindergarten through second grade field test and kindergarten national data collections, runs from May 2008 through April 2013. The total cost to the government for contractor and subcontractor costs is $21,885,476. This cost estimate includes two kindergarten data collections, one field test, design enhancements, and data file delivery and documentation. Table A-7 provides the costs by year.
Year |
Amount |
2008 |
$488,352 |
2009 |
$2,032,305 |
2010 |
$11,057,110 |
2011 |
$6,445,605 |
2012 |
$1,627,243 |
2013 |
$234,861 |
Total |
$21,885,476 |
Any changes in the cost of the information collection to the government resulting from the field test experience will be reported to OMB in memoranda describing the changes and their rationale.
The total increase in hours represents the total number of hours needed to complete both the field test of the ECLS-K and the annual hours needed to complete the full scale ECLS-K study.
The ECLS-K:11 field test will be used to test and perfect the base year child assessments and some teacher instrumentation. Publications relevant to the data collection will be part of the reports resulting from the field test and base year data collection. Data files from the national kindergarten collection will be produced and made available to researchers in a public-use format. Researchers who are approved by NCES's data confidentiality office for a restricted-use license can access restricted-use data files, which include more sensitive items and items that pertain to smaller numbers of children (e.g., information about the presence of specific disabilities). To be approved, researchers must demonstrate that they have a research question that cannot be answered with the public-use data. Codebooks and user manuals will be produced for both types of data files. All data will be merged at the child level. Data files will include all instrument variables (except for those that gather directly identifying information, such as the names of household members) and any relevant associated variables, such as composites or assessment scores. These variables will be in the format of the Electronic Code Book (ECB), and a record layout will be provided so that analysis packages other than SAS/PC, SPSS/PC, and Stata/PC could be used (e.g., analysis packages for Apple computers).
A data file with some data from the field test will be produced and provided to the National Eye Institute (NEI) and the National Institute for Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) for their use. The data files will include results from the vision and hearing screenings, demographic characteristics of the screened children, geographic location, and other descriptive data of the school. NEI and NIDCD plan on using field test data to assess the operational feasibility of conducting the screenings in a large-scale collection, as well as to analyze the presence of vision and hearing difficulties in a larger sample than is typically included in studies with which their agencies are affiliated. Field test data will only be shared with NEI and NIDCD for this specific purpose; they will not be shared with other researchers for their own analyses in the same manner as the data files from the national collection.
NCES understands the legal and ethical need to protect the privacy of the ECLS-K:11 surveyrespondents, and, with the contractor, has extensive experience in developing data files for release that meet the government’s requirements to protect individually identifiable data from disclosure. The researchers have experience on surveys meeting the standards set forth in NCES’s “Statistical Standards for Maintaining Confidentiality.” A variety of masking strategies will ensure that individuals may not be identified from the public-use data files. These strategies include omitting key identification variables such as name, address, telephone number, school name and address, and state or ZIP Code from the public-use file; collapsing categories or developing categories for continuous variables to retain information for analytic purposes while preserving confidentiality; and “topcoding”10 continuous variables.
The ECLS-K:11 reports or publications will include detailed methodological reports (one for the field test and full-scale study) describing all aspects of the data collection effort and psychometric properties of the assessment instruments, as well as reports that describe the population of children who are kindergartners in the 2010-11 school year.
The operational schedule for the ECLS-K:11 national study and field test is shown in Table A-8.
No exemption from the requirement to display the expiration date for OMB approval of the information collection is being requested for the ECLS-K:11.
Activity |
Start date |
End date |
ECLS-K:11 Field Test |
|
|
Select school sample |
7/15/20081 |
4/28/2009 |
Recruit schools |
4/15/2009 |
9/30/2009 |
Develop assessment |
9/30/2008 |
8/24/2009 |
Develop questionnaires |
9/30/2008 |
8/24/2009 |
Train data collectors |
6/1/2009 |
8/21/2009 |
Data collection |
8/24/2009 |
10/23/2009 |
Process data and analyze data |
9/1/2009 |
4/28/2010 |
Field test report |
2/15/2010 |
10/8/2010 |
ECLS-K:11 National Data Collection |
|
|
Select school sample |
7/15/2008 |
4/28/2009 |
Print/program assessment |
4/15/2010 |
7/20/2010 |
Print/program questionnaires |
3/1/2010 |
7/20/2010 |
Train data collectors |
6/1/2010 |
8/16/2010 |
Fall data collection |
8/9/2010 |
12/30/2010 |
Process data |
9/15/2010 |
1/15/2010 |
Spring data collection |
2/24/2011 |
7/15/2011 |
Process data |
3/15/2011 |
8/15/2011 |
Construct data files, user’s manual |
8/15/2011 |
10/25/2012 |
Methodology/psychometric reports |
8/6/2010 |
1/11/2013 |
1 To keep the study on schedule for a field test in the fall of 2009, the process of sampling PSUs and schools has already begun. As noted earlier, no schools or school districts will be contacted prior to receipt of OMB approval for the study.
No exceptions to the certification statement identified in item 19, “Certification for Paperwork Reduction Act Submissions,” of OMB Form 83-I apply to the ECLS-K:11.
1Throughout this package, reference is made to the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99. For ease of presentation, it will be referred to as the ECLS-K. The new study for which this submission requests approval is referred to as the ECLS-K:11.
2It currently is anticipated that only one field test will be needed for the kindergarten through second grade collections. This is why the field test described in this submission includes children and teachers from grades other than kindergarten. Third-graders are included so that higher-level items on the child assessment can be tested adequately in the field test.
3At each followup stage, a small percentage of children had been retained in a grade at some point prior to the wave of interest and therefore were in a grade lower than the target grade of that followup stage. In addition, a small number of children were found to be in the next higher grade.
4Wrap-around care and education is nonparental care and education that a child receives outside of regular school hours.
5Table A-6 provides detail about which components will be included in each round of full-scale collection.
6If the results of the field test of the translated items are unsatisfactory, an off-the-shelf assessment of children's Spanish-language literacy skills will be fielded.
7The ECLS-K had collections in kindergarten, first grade, third grade, fifth grade, and eighth grade.
8An hourly rate of $21.08 was used to translate teacher, parent, and school administrator response time into a dollar amount. This rate is based on the National Compensation Survey. See U.S. Department of Labor (2007). National Compensation Survey: Occupational Wages in the United States, March 1995.
9Some instruments are completed by the same person. Specifically, it is expected that the same person will complete fall teacher questionnaire part a, fall teacher child-level questionnaire part c, spring teacher questionnaire part b, and spring teacher child-level questionnaire part c. Also, it is expected that: the same person will complete the spring special education teacher questionnaires parts a and b and that the same person will complete the parent interview in fall and spring. The number of respondents is counted only once in the total for each of these three sets of survey instruments, as well as for the child assessments. Additionally, prompting for return of questionnaires is included in this burden chart but is not in the total number of respondents reported here; the study protocol asks school coordinators to prompt for return of questionnaires, but the coordinators are not respondents, per se.
10 Topcoding refers to the process of recoding outlier values to some acceptable end value. For instance, everyone with a personal income higher than $100,000 may be recoded to $100,000 to eliminate the outliers.
|
|
|
Early
Childhood Longitudinal Study |
A- |
|
| File Type | application/msword |
| File Title | Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011 |
| Last Modified By | ECLS |
| File Modified | 2009-03-19 |
| File Created | 2009-03-19 |