REL Evaluation Resposes to OMB comments

u. s. dEPARTMENT OF eDUCATION

institute of education sciences

subject: RESPONSES TO OMB comments on SURVEY OF CUSTOMERS FOR THE EVALUATION OF THE REGIONAL EDUCATIONAL LABORATORIES (ICR Ref No.: 201103-1850-006, AGENCY TRACKING # 1850-NEW, 4452)

Date: 6/14/2011, REVISED 6/24/2011

We appreciate the opportunity to respond to OMB’s comments on the above collection.

1. COMMENT: Please submit screen shots of the survey (note that the following comments are made without having seen the screen shots).  RESPONSE: The programming of the online survey is not complete, but we will submit the screen shots once they have been prepared as a non-substantive change request to OMB. 

  

2. COMMENT: We assume that the screen shots will show the tables with the grid/box lines removed; if that’s not the case, please do remove the grid/box lines.  RESPONSE: We will remove the lines as requested by OMB.

3. COMMENT: For the questions that have a “Do not use at all”, “Did Not Receive…”, or “Not able to judge” category, we recommend separating these categories from the other response categories (e.g. by use of an extra space for separation).  RESPONSE: We will separate these categories as requested by OMB.

4. COMMENT: In question A.3, you may want to consider adding a “Sometimes difficult” category in this question.  Currently, there is no choice between “Sometimes easy” and “Usually difficult”.  RESPONSE: Westat conducted internal cognitive testing during the 30 day public notice period, and found that question A.3 was difficult to answer.  We revised A.3 to have the following three categories: “very easy”, “moderately easy”, and “not at all easy.”  This revision is incorporated into the revised version of the survey included with this memo.

5. COMMENT: Please provide the summary of comments mentioned in Supporting Statement A.8 and responses to those comments. If you think it doesn’t make sense to incorporate them into A.8, you could upload the referenced document as a supplementary document.  RESPONSE: Comments and responses are provided as an attachment with this memo.

6. COMMENT: Could you cite in the supporting statement the source for the hourly rate estimate of $52? RESPONSE: The hourly rate of $52 per hours is based on average daily rates for administrators obtained from the survey “Salaries and Wages Paid Professional and Support Personnel in Public Schools” (http://www.edweek.org/media/43ers-data.pdf). We have submitted a revised Part A that incorporates this response.

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