IES Blog

With hundreds of tables to explore, the Digest of Education Statistics offers a wide array of education data. For the first time, NCES is visualizing Digest data in a new Digest State Dashboard. The Dashboard provides a centralized location for state-level Digest data, so users can easily find it all in one place. As the first-ever Digest data tool, the Dashboard helps you not only find and use NCES data but also better understand the education landscape of an individual state.

In alignment with NCES’s goal to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in our products, the Dashboard provides data for all entities that are part of the United States: the 50 states, the District of Columbia, the Bureau of Indian Education, and outlying areas—i.e., American Samoa, Guam, Northern Marianas, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands.

For each of these entities, the Dashboard highlights the most recently published Digest data on topics of interest (see textbox). The selected topics represent key indicators of a state’s education landscape, and data are presented for each entity and topic whenever available.

To help make data interpretation easier, the Dashboard presents data in figures—like bar charts, line graphs, and brief tables—that allow you to interact with the data in ways not possible with the static tables. If you’ve ever explored the Condition of Education—which will be updated next month (May 2024)—the Dashboard’s figures should look very familiar, as they were designed to mirror the appearance and functionality of the Condition’s interactive figures. Similarly, in the Dashboard, you can

1. modify the figure by selecting characteristics and years to include;
2. share the figure on various platforms; and
3. download the figure and the data used in the figure. 

The Dashboard also provides links to other NCES state-level data tools, centralizing these resources and providing a more detailed picture of each state’s educational landscape. You can find state-specific links to NAEP State Profiles, the NTPS State Dashboard, and the PIAAC Skills Map on each state’s page. Plus, you can find links to other NCES data tools, like the EDGE ACS Dashboard and the IPEDS Trend Generator, on the Dashboard’s homepage.

The Dashboard will be continuously updated throughout the year—as data become available in the Digest—making it a great source of up-to-date information for policymakers, researchers, practitioners, and parents/families. In May 2024, several figures will be updated, including two postsecondary figures on enrollment and institutions and student charges. Be sure to check back and follow NCES on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube and subscribe to the NCES News Flash to stay informed when these and other updates are made. You can also continue to explore the Digest tables to find even more state-level data.

As the school year comes to a close, many families are considering opportunities to continue learning over the summer months. Summer learning has often been seen as a way to supplement instruction during the regular school year. The U.S. Department of Education’s “COVID-19 Handbook” notes that summer learning “can offer another opportunity to accelerate learning, especially for those students most impacted by disruptions to learning during the school year.” Data from the Household Pulse Survey (HPS), which NCES developed in partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau and other federal statistical agencies, explores access to summer learning opportunities by school type, racial/ethnic group, household educational attainment level, and income level.

The HPS¹ provides data on how people’s lives have been impacted by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Phase 3.2 of the HPS introduced questions on the summer education activities of children enrolled in public or private school or homeschooled, following the end of the normal school year in spring 2021. Adults 18 years old and over who had children under 18 in the home enrolled in school were asked if any of the children had attended a traditional summer school program because of poor grades; attended a summer school program to help catch up with lost learning time during the pandemic; attended school-led summer camps for subjects like math, science, or reading; and/or worked with private tutors to help catch up with lost learning time during the pandemic. Adults were allowed to select all categories that applied. Data from Phase 3.2 of the HPS, covering September 15 to 27, 2021, are discussed in this blog post.

Among adults with children enrolled in public or private school or homeschooled, 26 percent reported children were enrolled in any summer education activities after the end of the normal school year in spring of 2021 (figure 1). The most reported summer education activity was attending a summer school program to catch up on lost learning time during the pandemic (10 percent). Eight percent reported children attended school-led summer camps for subjects like math, science, or reading and 7 percent each reported children attended a traditional summer school program because of poor grades or worked with private tutors to catch up with lost learning time during the pandemic.

Figure 1. Among adults 18 years old and over who had children under age 18 in the home enrolled in school, percentage reporting participation in summer education activities after the end of the normal school year in spring of 2021, by type of summer activity: September 15 to 27, 2021

NCES staff presented information on reading data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies (ECLS) Program at the June 2021 Institute of Education Sciences (IES)/Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) Reading Summit. The ECLS data cover a wide range of reading-related topics, such as children’s reading knowledge and skills, home literacy activities, and teachers’ instructional practices. The presentation included a brief overview of three ECLS program studies and the reading-related data collected by each. In addition, the presentation included a discussion of the resources available to either see what research has been conducted with the data or explore the data independently. As the focus of the presentation was on data available to the public for secondary analysis, its target audience was researchers and others with a data science focus.

Access the Reading Summit presentation—Reading Data Available from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies (ECLS)—and handout below to learn more about ECLS reading data.

• Video presentation
• Presentation slides
• Resources handout

Be sure to also check out this blog post to learn more about the work highlighted at the IES Reading Summit.

By Jill Carlivati McCarroll, NCES

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought enormous challenges to the education system, including a historic decline in enrollment in fall 2020—the largest since during World War II. Due to the relatively small decrease in the number of teachers, there was a significant drop in the pupil/teacher ratio.  

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) releases key statistics, including school staffing data, compiled from state administrative records through the Common Core of Data (CCD). In 2019, about 48 percent of public school staff were teachers (3.2 million) and 13 percent were instructional aides (0.9 million). NCES’s new School Pulse Panel survey found that in January 2022, about 61 percent of public schools with at least one vacancy reported that the pandemic increased the number of teacher and staff vacancies, and 57 percent of schools with at least one vacancy found that the pandemic forced them to use teachers outside their normal duty areas.

Pupil/teacher ratios provide a measure of the quantity of instructional resources available to students by comparing the number of students with the total full-time equivalent (FTE) of all teachers, including special education teachers. The public and private elementary and secondary average class size is larger than the pupil/teacher ratio since it normally does not factor into team teaching, specialty teachers, or special education classes. Between fall 2019 and fall 2020, enrollment in public elementary and secondary schools¹ decreased by 2.7 percent.² This decrease was larger than the 0.2 percent (6,700)³ decrease in the number of public school teachers. Since fall 2020, public school enrollment decreased by a larger amount than did the number of teachers. Thus, the pupil/teacher ratio declined in school year 2020–21 by a relatively large 0.5 pupils per teacher, from 15.9 to 15.4 pupils per teacher (figure 1). This is the largest 1-year decrease in more than 4 decades. In comparison, the pupil/teacher ratio for private schools was 11.4 in 2019–20 (the latest year of actual data available). It is worth noting that pupil/teacher ratios vary across schools with different characteristics (table 208.10).

Viewed over a longer term, the pupil/teacher ratio in public schools in 2019–20 (15.9) was only slightly lower than in 2010–11 (16.0), so nearly all the change during the 2010–11 to 2020–21 period occurred in the last year. The pupil/teacher ratio for private schools decreased from 12.5 in 2010–11 to 11.4 in 2019–20.

The emergence of the coronavirus pandemic 2 years ago shifted not only how students received educational services around the world but also how the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) carried out its mission, which is to collect, analyze, and report statistics on the condition of education in the United States.

NCES has conducted several surveys to measure educational enrollment, experiences, and outcomes as part of existing data collections and created new, innovative, and timely data initiatives. NCES is currently fielding more than 15 projects with information related to the pandemic. Since early 2020, NCES has collected information about educational experiences of students from elementary through postsecondary institutions. A few of the data collections will extend beyond 2022, providing rich data resources that will document changes in the educational landscape throughout the lifecycle of the pandemic.

NCES Coronavirus Pandemic Data Collection Coverage

In order to respond to the call for information about how students learned during widespread school disruptions, NCES modified existing and created new data collection avenues to receive and report vital information in unprecedented ways. Below are summaries of some of the data products available.

• The NAEP Monthly School Survey provided data during the beginning of 2021 on instructional modes offered from schools that served fourth- and eighth-graders. With participants from schools that were part of the NAEP 2022 assessments, this survey was the program’s first-ever monthly data collection and dissemination activity. It answered questions about what learning opportunities schools offered to students across states and how student enrollment changed each month overall and by race/ethnicity.
   
• NCES created the School Pulse Panel in 2021 to provide reliable data on school reopening efforts in public elementary, middle, and high schools nationally. NCES released 2021 summer and early fall results in December and has provided monthly updates since February 2022. The latest results show that the pandemic increased the teacher and staff vacancies in nearly a quarter of participating public schools.
   
• Through our existing administrative data collections, NCES has released enrollment estimates for fall 2020 at the public elementary and secondary levels as well as at the postsecondary level. These data reveal a drop in enrollment compared with 2019—prior to the pandemic.
   
• In February 2022, NCES released a report titled Impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic on Public and Private Elementary and Secondary Education in the United States (Preliminary Data): Results from the 2020–21 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS). This report provides data on changes to instruction, support, and resources in public and private elementary and secondary schools during the pandemic.
   
• In June 2021, NCES released a report titled 2019–20 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:20): First Look at the Impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic on Undergraduate Student Enrollment, Housing, and Finances (Preliminary Data). This report focuses on how the pandemic affected postsecondary student experiences.
   
• To support parents, educators, and researchers, NCES created a Coronavirus Pandemic Information and Resource page. This page contains common questions related to the pandemic and its impact on education.

Looking ahead, NCES will provide NAEP data on how student performance has changed in various subjects since the coronavirus pandemic began. NCES will also collect and report information about learning contexts, which are critical for understanding educational outcomes. NCES will also develop a new system to share pandemic-related data collected across the center.

All of these resources are currently available or will be available on the NCES website.

By Ebony Walton and Josh DeLaRosa, NCES