School Pulse Panel 2025-26 and 2026-27 (SPP 2025-26, SPP 2026-27) Preliminary Field Activities

The School Pulse Panel (SPP) is a data collection that was originally designed to collect voluntary responses from a nationally representative sample of public schools to better understand how schools, students, and educators were responding to the ongoing stressors of the coronavirus pandemic. The School Pulse Panel is conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), part of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), within the United States Department of Education. Initially, the purpose of the study was to collect extensive data on issues brought to light by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as other important education-related issues that could inform data-driven policy decisions, in U.S. public schools. Due to the immediate need to collect pandemic-era information from schools as described in Executive Order 14000, an emergency clearance was issued to develop and field the first several monthly collections of the SPP in 2021 and a full review of the SPP data collection was performed in 2022 (OMB# 1850-0969). SPPs innovative design and timely dissemination of findings have been used and cited frequently among Department of Education senior leadership, the White House Domestic Policy Council, the USDAs Food and Nutrition Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Congressional deliberations, and the media. The growing interest from stakeholders resulted in a request for funding to create an established NCES quick-turnaround data collection vehicle to become a mainstay for NCES. Funding for a mainstay collection was approved in late 2022, and NCES conducted a new collection during the 2023-24 school year (OMB# 1850-0975). The School Pulse Panel study is one of the few reliable, nationally representative, quick-turnaround studies that produces data on U.S. public schools. The sample design for the 2025-26 collection will roughly be the same as the 2024-25 collection with 4,000 public schools randomly selected to an initial sample and 4,000 in a reserve sample. It is expected these schools will come from roughly 3,000 districts. The goal is national representation from about 1,200 responding schools each month in order to report out national estimates. School staff will be asked to provide requested data monthly during the 2025-26 school year. This approach provides the ability to collect detailed information on various topics while also assessing changes over time for items that are repeated from year to year. Given the demand for data collection, the content of the survey is expected to change monthly. For the 2025-26 school year, the survey may ask school staff about a wide range of topics, including but not limited to staffing; learning recovery; absenteeism; usage of federal funds; and overall principal experiences. This package includes preliminary activities, including contacting and obtaining research approvals from public school districts with an established research approval process (special contact districts) where applicable; notifying sampled schools and districts of their selection for the survey; and inviting them to complete a short Screener Survey to establish points of contact. In spring of 2025, a clearance for main study data collection activities that will include instruments for the first quarter of collections will be submitted for 60-day and 30-day public comment. Subsequent quarterly content submissions will be submitted for 30-day public comment. This request is to conduct the SPP 2025-26 preliminary activities. Substantial edits and additional materials may be added to this package after the 60-day public comment period is complete, in time for the subsequent 30-day public comment period that will begin Fall 2024. Materials for SPP are cleared under two OMB Number sequences. Materials for SPP 2022 and SPP 2024-25 were cleared under OMB# 1850-0969, while SPP 2023-24 and now SPP 2025-26 are cleared under OMB# 1850-0975.

The latest form for School Pulse Panel 2025-26 and 2026-27 (SPP 2025-26, SPP 2026-27) Preliminary Field Activities expires 2028-01-31 and can be found here.