######## Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort: Kindergarten and First Grade (ECLS-B, K-1) Combined Field Test IMT/OMB Clearance Package 2^nd^ Draft ![](media/image1.wmf){width="1.5in" height="0.6027777777777777in"}

######## 

####### Deliverable Number 52

####### August 3, 2005

> Ina Wallace
>
> Sarah Wheeless
>
> Alice Turner
>
> RTI International^\*^

This page intentionally left blank.

**Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort: Kindergarten and
First Grade (ECLS-B, K-1)**

**Combined Field Test IMT/OMB Clearance Package**

U.S. Department of Education

Institute of Education Sciences

National Center for Education Statistics

This page intentionally left blank.

Table of Contents

Section Page

Section A. Justification [1](#__RefHeading___Toc110858166)

1\. Circumstances Making Collection of Information Necessary
[1](#circumstances-making-collection-of-information-necessary)

Data Collection to Date [9](#__RefHeading___Toc110858169)

2\. How, by Whom, and for What Purpose Information Is to Be Used
[14](#how-by-whom-and-for-what-purpose-information-is-to-be-used)

Study Components [15](#__RefHeading___Toc110858171)

3\. Use of Automated, Electronic, Mechanical, or Other Technological
Collection Techniques
[19](#use-of-automated-electronic-mechanical-or-other-technological-collection-techniques)

4\. Efforts to Identify Duplication
[19](#efforts-to-identify-duplication)

5\. Impact on Small Businesses or Small Entities
[20](#impact-on-small-businesses-or-small-entities)

6\. Consequences of Not Conducting the Data Collection
[20](#consequences-of-not-conducting-the-data-collection)

7\. Special Circumstances [21](#special-circumstances)

8\. Outside Consultation [21](#outside-consultation)

9\. Justification of Compensation [22](#justification-of-compensation)

10\. Assurance of Confidentiality [23](#assurance-of-confidentiality)

11\. Justification for Sensitive Questions
[24](#justification-for-sensitive-questions)

12\. Estimates of Hour Burden [24](#estimates-of-hour-burden)

13\. Estimate for the Total Annual Cost Burden to Respondents or
Record-keepers Resulting from the Collection of Information
[25](#estimate-for-the-total-annual-cost-burden-to-respondents-or-record-keepers-resulting-from-the-collection-of-information)

14\. Estimate of Annualized Costs to Federal Government
[25](#estimate-of-annualized-costs-to-federal-government)

15\. Reasons for Program Change [25](#reasons-for-program-change)

16\. Plans for Tabulation and Publication of Data
[25](#plans-for-tabulation-and-publication-of-data)

17\. Request for Approval to Not Display OMB Approval Expiration
Date........
[26](#request-for-approval-to-not-display-omb-approval-expiration-date)

18\. Exceptions to the Certification Statement in Item 19 of OMB Form
83-1.........
[26](#exceptions-to-the-certification-statement-in-item-19-of-omb-form-83-1)

Section B. Collection of Information Employing Statistical Techniques
[26](#__RefHeading___Toc110858188)

1\. Respondent Universe and Sampling Selection to Be Used
[26](#respondent-universe-and-sampling-selection-to-be-used)

2\. Procedures for Collection of Information
[27](#procedures-for-collection-of-information)

3\. Methods Used to Maximize Response Rates
[33](#methods-used-to-maximize-response-rates)

4\. Pilot Tests [35](#pilot-tests)

5\. Personnel Involved in ECLS-B K-1 Sample Design and Data Collection
[36](#personnel-involved-in-ecls-b-k-1-sample-design-and-data-collection)

References [37](#references)

List of Figures

No. Page

[Figure A-1. ECLS-B Conceptual Model 8](#__RefHeading___Toc97360899)

[Figure A-2. Combined kindergarten and first grade
12](#__RefHeading___Toc97360900)

List of Tables

No. Page

Table A-1. Previous waves of ECLS-B data collection
[9](#__RefHeading___Toc97360905)

Table A-2. Components of field test instruments
[16](#__RefHeading___Toc97360906)

Table A-3. Members of the ECLS-B technical review panel (TRP)
[22](#__RefHeading___Toc97360907)

Table A-4. Schedule of compensation for ECLS-B
[23](#__RefHeading___Toc97360908)

Table A-5. Estimate of time burden for the field test instrument.
[25](#__RefHeading___Toc97360909)

Table B.1. Strata from which children will be selected for the
kindergarten cohort of the K-1 field test
[28](#__RefHeading___Toc97360910)

Table B.2. Child assessments completed in the preschool field test, by
PSU and month of birth (Year 2000), in those PSUs that may be a part of
the K-1 field test [29](#__RefHeading___Toc97360911)

Table B.3. Domain variables to be used for analyzing the ECLS-B K-1
field test by instrument/item pool [30](#__RefHeading___Toc97360912)

Table B-4. Personnel involved in ECLS-B K-1 field test sample design and
data collection [36](#__RefHeading___Toc97360913)

**Paperwork Reduction Act Submission**

**Supporting Statement**

**Agency:** U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education
Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics

**Title:** Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B),
Combined Kindergarten and First Grade Field Test

**Instruments NCES is requesting clearance for:**

> Abbreviated Parent Interview
>
> Child Direct Assessment
>
> Teacher Self Administered Questionnaire

At this time, NCES requests clearance from the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB) to collect data for the combined Early Childhood
Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) Kindergarten and First Grade
field test during fall 2005. Clearance was granted in 1999 (OMB No.
1850-0756) for the first two rounds of data collection for the ECLS‑B,
which were the 9-month field test and national study and 18-month field
test, in 2002 for the 2-year national study (OMB No. 1850-0756), and in
2004 for the preschool field test (OMB No. 1850-0756). This application
requests clearance for the combined Kindergarten and First Grade field
test. We will submit an OMB package for a 30 day review prior to the
ECLS-B kindergarten national study.

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc110858166 .anchor}Section A. Justification

# 1. Circumstances Making Collection of Information Necessary {#circumstances-making-collection-of-information-necessary .ahd12-1}

Background

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) is part of
a longitudinal studies program comprising two overlapping cohorts---a
birth cohort and a kindergarten cohort (the Early Childhood Longitudinal
Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998--99, or ECLS--K). Data from both of
these cohorts will provide information to policy-makers, researchers,
and practitioners about children's development and early learning
experiences from birth through the end of high school. The data also
will allow researchers to examine hypotheses regarding variables that
influence children's early development and their preparation for and
later success in school. Whereas the ECLS-K is currently following a
nationally representative sample of kindergarten children through high
school, the ECLS-B is designed to follow a nationally representative
sample of children born in 2001 from 9 months of age through the first
grade. One of the goals of the ECLS-B program is to link the performance
of children in the ECLS-B cohort with that of the children in the ECLS-K
cohort. Because kindergarten and first grade are the only time points
when both cohorts will be seen, the data obtained during kindergarten
and first grade are critical to make this linkage. This linking strategy
will enable the data from the ECLS-K and ECLS-B to form a single
synthetic cohort, forming a comprehensive portrait of children's
development from birth through high school. Moreover, data obtained at
school entry is critical for researchers to be able to examine which
factors during the first 4 years of life are associated with the
cognitive, social, and behavioral skills necessary for success in
school.

The ECLS-B cohort has already been seen at 9 months and at 2 years and
will be seen in fall 2005 during the preschool year. The current effort
is directed toward conducting a field test that will cover both
kindergarten and first grade and is scheduled to occur during fall 2005.
The field test is necessary to develop the ECLS-K-1 child cognitive
assessment and to test school-based data collection methods that will be
used in the national study. The children seen for the field test will
include a group who were seen in the preschool field test as well as a
newly recruited group of children, most of whom will be in first grade.
In addition to providing the necessary data for developing the child
cognitive assessment, the field test will be used to evaluate a variety
of school data collection procedures.

The ECLS-B represents a collaborative effort by health, education, and
human services agencies. Sponsors include the U.S. Department of
Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for
Education Statistics (NCES), the National Center for Health Statistics
(NCHS) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and other
components of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Other sponsors
within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services include the
Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF), the Maternal and
Child Health Bureau (MCHB) of the Health Resources and Services
Administration (HRSA), Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning
and Evaluation (ASPE), and Office of Minority Health. The Economic
Research Service (ERS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and
the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) and the Office of Indian
Education (OIE) of the U.S. Department of Education are also
participating sponsors for the study.

In conducting ECLS-B, NCES is complying with the mandate stated in
section 151 of the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (H.R. 3801):

"The Statistics Center shall collect, report, analyze, and disseminate
statistical data related to education in the United States and other
nations, including ...collecting data on ...the social and economic
status of children, including their academic achievement... access to,
and opportunity for, early childhood education...and conducting
longitudinal and special data collections necessary to report on the
condition and progress of education...."

Through initiatives such as *No Child Left Behind* and *Good Start, Grow
Smart*, the federal government recognizes the importance of school
readiness and efforts designed to prepare young children for school
entry. One of the guiding principles of *No Child Left Behind* is
closing the achievement gap between poor and more affluent students and
between US students and their international peers. Data from the ECLS-B
will be very useful in addressing the precursors of achievement gaps,
the factors related to those discrepancies, and possible mechanisms for
reducing the gaps. One of the major goals of the *Good Start, Grow
Smart* initiative is to disseminate early childhood research to relevant
stakeholders. The ECLS is one of the federally funded research programs
that will provide this type of information. The ECLS data will be an
important resource for other federal initiatives. Among these are the
NICHD initiatives (i.e., the *Science and Ecology of Early Development
(SEED)*, *Research on Intergenerational Transfers, Social and
Demographic Studies of Race and Ethnicity in the United States, and
Social and Cultural Dimensions of Health*) that address research on
children born to immigrant parents; health disparities, the effects of
poverty, family structure, and family stability on child health and
development; father involvement; and school readiness. In addition,
there are many questions related to Child Care and Development Fund
program of the Child Care Bureau that will be able to be answered with
the ECLS-B data, including the choices of non-parental care that parents
make for their children, and how these relate to parents' incomes, work
schedules and participation in social/subsidy programs.

The ECLS-B represents the first national examination of children, their
families, and the types of early care and educational programs in which
these children participate during the first 6 years of life. Collection
of the fourth wave of the ECLS-B data is needed to allow researchers and
policy-makers to gauge the readiness of young children at school entry
and to understand what needs to be done to better prepare them for
school. In order to mount the national study, this field test is
critical to develop cognitive assessment instrumentation and to refine
school data collection procedures.

Issues Addressed by the ECLS-B

There are four key areas that are addressed by the ECLS-B: (1)
children's health status throughout childhood; (2) children's growth and
development in critical domains; (3) children's transitions to child
care and early childhood education programs, kindergarten, and beyond;
and (4) school readiness. The kindergarten and first grade rounds of the
ECLS-B are designed to address these issues when the children enter
formal school settings and to examine the factors that determine
children's readiness for school. These data will contribute to the
knowledge base detailing the role of early life experiences,
relationships, and early care and learning environments on children's
development and readiness to learn in school. The data collected at
kindergarten and first grade entry are critical to understand which of
these early factors and experiences are linked with successful
transition to school. The specific contributions of the data collected
during the kindergarten and first grade rounds are indicated below.

**Children's Health Status**. It is well known that children who are
physically and emotionally well are better able to explore their
environment and develop the skills necessary to prepare them for school.
The ECLS-B is interested in children's health at birth and thereafter.
Questions addressed by these data include:

-   How are children's early health care and health status, including
    disabilities and injuries, related to their preparedness for formal
    schooling?

-   What groups of children have more developmental difficulties, and
    how does family involvement in early intervention, early childhood
    education programs, and health promotion and prevention programs
    enhance the rates of growth and development of these vulnerable
    children? How do these children fare when they enter formal
    schooling?

-   What kinds of school programs are available for children with health
    and developmental disabilities?

**Children's Growth and Development.** A major goal of the ECLS-B is to
describe children's growth and development in the critical years before
and when they enter school. With a sample that is representative of the
nation's children born in 2001, it will be possible to examine
differences in children's growth and development by race/ethnicity,
socioeconomic background, gender, and geographic region. In addition, by
including data regarding family structure, marital relationships,
parenting behavior and attitudes, and the home environment, it will be
possible to examine the factors and conditions that best support
children's development in the domains that are critical for school
success: language skills, social and emotional well-being, approaches to
learning, and cognition and general knowledge. Determining the extent to
which the environment supports such achievements is one of the goals of
the kindergarten and first grade rounds. Questions addressed by the data
will include:

-   What are children's competencies in cognitive, socioemotional,
    language, and physical domains when they enter kindergarten and
    first grade?

-   What are the levels and rates of growth in these domains from
    infancy through kindergarten and first grade? How do these levels
    and rates of growth vary for different groups of children? What
    characteristics of children, their families, and their early
    care/education experiences are associated with different levels and
    rates of growth?

-   Which groups of children have more developmental and academic
    difficulties, and which groups of children have fewer of these
    difficulties and more accomplishments?

-   What characterizes the growth and development of children who
    experience difficulties during infancy? How do family resources,
    early interventions, early childhood programs, health promotion and
    prevention programs, and school programs enhance the rates of growth
    and development for these vulnerable children? In what kinds of
    educational programs are these children enrolled when they enter
    school?

**Children's Participation in Out-of-Home Programs and School.** The
ECLS-B has collected data regarding children's transitions from
exclusive parental care to care by other people and to group-based early
childhood programs, including the timing of such transitions. Data on
the characteristics of early child care programs and providers are also
part of the ECLS-B data set. Previous longitudinal studies of children
in child care (e.g., the Cost Quality and Child Outcomes study and the
NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development) provide evidence
that the quantity and quality of child care arrangements are linked to a
variety of child and family outcomes during the early school years.
However, the findings from these two studies do not always agree. In
particular, the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development
(SECCYD) found that the time spent in non-maternal care arrangements was
linked to problem behaviors in kindergarten even when maternal
sensitivity and family background were taken into account (NICHD Early
Child Care Research Network, 2003). In contrast, Peisner-Feinberg and
her colleagues from the Cost, Quality, and Child Outcomes study (1999)
found that high-quality child care was related to children's language,
mathematics, and behavioral competence in the classroom through the
first years of schooling. Results from these two large studies suggest
that there is more to be learned about how variations in
programs---including organization, sponsorship, and quality---affect
children with varying backgrounds and needs in preparing for school.
With a nationally representative group of children on whom data were
gathered at regular intervals, it will be possible to examine these
issues taking factors such as income, race/ethnicity, medical risk, size
of community into account. It is expected that these data will enable
researchers to describe how the type, stability, and quality of child
care are related to readiness for school upon kindergarten entry.
Moreover, they may provide us with a better understanding of which
children may benefit more from educational, non-parental care
experiences such as Head Start and/or formal center-based care.

The kinds of questions that will be addressed by the data collected
during the kindergarten and first grade rounds include:

-   How do the variations in early care and education
    programs---including organization, sponsorship, and quality---affect
    children with varying backgrounds and needs in getting ready for
    school?

-   What is the relationship between child care and academic and social
    difficulties experienced by children? How do child care experiences
    affect how children with disabilities prepare for school?

-   How do the characteristics of the child care programs interact with
    the characteristics of children and their families to affect
    children's social and cognitive development? How long lasting are
    these programs, and what is their relationship with subsequent
    school factors?

-   What is the effect of participation in different types of early care
    and education programs on the long-term outcomes of children? How do
    the outcomes of participation vary by characteristics such as
    race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and other child and family
    characteristics?

**School Readiness.** The concept of "school readiness," central to this
study, can be seen as a threshold level of developmental characteristics
and skills necessary for kindergartners to meet school and society's
expectations. Traditionally, the concept of readiness emphasized the
acquisition of skills presumed to be necessary to benefit from formal
instruction, such as knowing colors, the alphabet, and numbers;
awareness of print concepts; writing one's name; and using crayons and
scissors. Although these skills underlie much of what is taught in
school and may be thought of as necessary, they are by no means
sufficient. It has been recognized that school readiness is based on
more than pre-academic skills. In fact, some researchers suggest that
social and emotional adaptation is as important to long-term school
success as are traditional pre-academic skills (Boyer, 1991; Carnegie
Task Force on Meeting the Needs of Young Children, 1994; Ewing Marion
Kauffman Foundation, 2002; Ladd, 1990; Masten et al., 1995; Raver,
2002). One conclusion reached is that cognitive development and
social-emotional competence are interrelated and that success in school
depends on both. Research indicates that parent-child and teacher-child
relationships are critically important in developing these skills.
Moreover, the quality of the child-teacher relationship is related to
academic and social success in elementary school; this is especially
true for children who are otherwise at risk of academic or social
problems in school (Peisner-Feinberg et al., 2001).

It has also been shown that there are achievement gaps as a function of
race/ethnicity, income, and other characteristics as early as school
entry. For instance, both the ECLS-K (Rathbun & West, 2004) and the
Prospects study (U.S. Department of Education, 1993, cited in Phillips,
Crouse, & Ralph, 1998) indicate that differences exist in children's
basic skills as a function of race in the first years of school and that
these differences widen as children progress through school. However,
neither of these studies examined the children prior to school entry.
Smaller-scale studies suggest that parenting behaviors (e.g.,
nurturance, discipline, teaching, and language uses), perinatal factors
(e.g., prematurity and low birth weight), and access to quality child
care are among the variables that can explain the gaps in school
readiness (Brooks-Gunn & Markman, 2004; Magnuson & Waldfogel, 2004;
Reichman, 2004). The ECLS-B data set will be able to be used to describe
how these various factors relate to school readiness and gaps in
readiness skills.

The ECLS-B will examine children's preparation for school in terms of
their characteristics, their families' contributions, and their early
care and educational experiences. Because readiness for school is linked
to those competencies seen in the preschool years as well as to the home
and school experiences of preschool children (National Research Council
and Institute of Medicine, 2000), the ECLS-B data will provide the
research and policy community with a greater understanding of the
factors associated with school success and school failure. The data
collected during previous rounds, in conjunction with those collected
during the kindergarten and first grade rounds, will enable researchers
to test different models of school readiness and will provide a
comprehensive picture of the factors that lead to school success. The
longitudinal study design will permit a thorough understanding of how
the characteristics, experiences, and environment of children in the
preschool years influence their initial achievement in school. Moreover,
with a nationally representative sample, the ECLS-B kindergarten and
first grade data will enable researchers to develop an operational
definition of school readiness based on a cluster of the best functional
precursors of school success. The kinds of questions that the
kindergarten and first grade data will generate include:

-   What literacy, language, mathematical, social, and motor skills do
    children exhibit when they enter kindergarten and first grade, and
    what is the variation by demographic characteristics such as
    race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and family structure?

-   What characteristics of children, their families, and their early
    care and educational experiences influence children's readiness for
    school? What are the most important characteristics in the
    attainment of these skills and behaviors?

-   What contributions do fathers make to children's preparation for
    schooling that are independent of mothers' contributions?

-   How do schools facilitate the transition into kindergarten and first
    grade? What is the relationship of this transition to children's
    success in school? How do parents prepare for this transition?

-   How do the characteristics of classrooms (e.g., curriculum,
    practices) relate to children's development and interact with their
    previous experiences in preschool and child care?

-   How do child parental, family, and early educational factors during
    the preschool years relate to differences in skills at kindergarten
    and first grade entry?

The overall conceptual model guiding the ECLS-B is that children's
preparation for school begins at birth and continues until they enter
school for the first time (see f***igure A-1***). The model is framed by
an ecological view of development (Bronfenbrenner, 1986) that posits the
child developing within the context of family, community, schools, and
governmental policies. As depicted in the model, children's school
readiness is the central outcome of this study and may be defined as a
threshold level of developmental characteristics and skills necessary
for kindergartners to meet public school expectations. Child growth and
development, which determine school readiness, are influenced by
multiple factors that are themselves interrelated. Parental, extended
family/household, and community and school/child care factors influence
one another and have an impact on the child's health, growth, and
intellectual, language, and socioemotional development.

This model was used as a springboard to develop the data collection
strategy and content of the ECLS-B. The broad view of development and
well-being and the different environments in which development and
learning occur are critically important to the ECLS-B design. The
kindergarten and first grade rounds of the ECLS-B are specifically
designed to collect data when children enter formal school settings,
assessing children's socioemotional, behavioral, cognitive, language,
and physical development during the first 2 years of formal schooling.
Data will also be collected on the variables that affect developmental
skills, such as family organization, parental involvement and attitudes,
and the classroom and teacher characteristics. Moreover, these data will
be used in conjunction with the ECLS-B data collected during the first
four years of life. The longitudinal study design will permit a thorough
understanding of how the early characteristics, experiences, and
environment influence the children's initial success in school. The K-1
data collections will enable researchers to examine the kinds of early
care/education programs that are linked with later academic success; the
family and home characteristics that promote attitudes and skills
necessary for school success; and the cognitive, social, and behavioral
abilities that lead to competence in literacy, mathematics, and social
interactions. The data collected by the ECLS-B and the information
disseminated through reports prepared by the U.S. Department of
Education, Institute of Education Sciences, NCES, and others will inform
decision-makers, educational practitioners, researchers, and parents
about the ways in which America raises and nurtures its children, how
children are prepared for school, and how schools and early childhood
programs affect the lives of the children who attend them. These data
are critical for consumers, analysts, and policy-makers alike who
require the knowledge base to develop strategies and guidelines to
ensure school success.

The questions and issues listed above are a sample of the types that
will be asked in the K-1 national rounds. As indicated previously, the
field test for which we are currently requesting clearance will not
contribute to an examination of these issues but will provide the needed
information to mount the national study. The field test will be used to
develop the child assessment (especially the lowest level) and to and
refine the school data collection procedures.

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc97360899 .anchor}Figure A-1. ECLS-B Conceptual
Model

Using the data collected in the field test to develop the child
instrument and refine school-based procedures, the national study will
be able to achieve its objectives.

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc110858169 .anchor}Data Collection to Date

A three-stage sample design was used to select a nationally
representative sample of approximately 14,000 children born in 2001, of
whom 10,688 were seen at 9 months, for the first data collection. The
first stage consisted of a sample of primary sampling units (PSUs); the
PSUs were geographical areas defined by metropolitan statistical areas
(MSAs), counties, or groups or counties.  For the second stages, large
PSUs were subdivided into smaller units (secondary sampling units, or
SSUs) in an effort to reduce travel costs, and a sample of SSUs was
selected from within the larger PSUs.  The third stage consisted of a
sample of children from within the SSUs. 

The sample includes children from different racial/ethnic and
socioeconomic backgrounds. Asian children (including Pacific Islander
and Chinese children), American Indian children, moderately
low-birth-weight children (1,500-2,500 grams), very low-birth-weight
children (under 1,500 grams), and twins were oversampled. Prior to the
9-month national data collection, two field tests were conducted.
Although initial plans called for an 18-month national data collection,
only a field test was carried out at 18 months; the national data
collection for that age was postponed until 2 years. A field test for
the preschool round was completed in February 2005, and plans are under
way for the preschool national study to occur in fall 2005. ***Table
A-1*** provides information regarding the sample sizes for each of the
components that have been completed.

+-----------------------------------+--------------+----------+--------+
| []{#__RefHeading___Toc97360905    |              |          |        |
| .anchor}Table A-1. Previous waves |              |          |        |
| of ECLS-B data collection         |              |          |        |
+-----------------------------------+--------------+----------+--------+
| Data collection                   | Start date   | Sample   | Com    |
|                                   | of           | size     | pleted |
|                                   | collection   | fielded  | sam    |
|                                   |              |          | ple^1^ |
+-----------------------------------+--------------+----------+--------+
| First 9-month field test          | September    | 1,517    | 643    |
|                                   | 1999         |          |        |
+-----------------------------------+--------------+----------+--------+
| Second 9-month field test         | September    | 979      | 722    |
|                                   | 2000         |          |        |
+-----------------------------------+--------------+----------+--------+
| 18-month field test               | June 2001    | 807      | 650    |
+-----------------------------------+--------------+----------+--------+
| 9-month national study            | October 2001 | 14,000   | 10,688 |
+-----------------------------------+--------------+----------+--------+
| 2-year national study             | January 2003 | 10,869   | 9,836  |
+-----------------------------------+--------------+----------+--------+
| 2-year child care provider        | February     | 4,390    | 3,235  |
| interview                         | 2003         |          |        |
+-----------------------------------+--------------+----------+--------+
| 2-year child care observation     | February     | 2,149    | 1,449  |
|                                   | 2003         |          |        |
+-----------------------------------+--------------+----------+--------+
| Preschool field test full parent  | September    | 303      | 250    |
| interview                         | 2004         |          |        |
+-----------------------------------+--------------+----------+--------+
| Preschool field test child        | September    | 1,444    | 1248   |
| assessment                        | 2004         |          |        |
+-----------------------------------+--------------+----------+--------+
| Preschool field test child care   | October 2004 | 192      | 172    |
| provider interview                |              |          |        |
+-----------------------------------+--------------+----------+--------+
| Preschool field test child care   | November     | 162      | 107^2^ |
| observation                       | 2004         |          |        |
+-----------------------------------+--------------+----------+--------+
| ^1^ Parent interview unless       |              |          |        |
| otherwise indicated.              |              |          |        |
|                                   |              |          |        |
| ^2^ February 28, 2005.            |              |          |        |
+-----------------------------------+--------------+----------+--------+

Overview of Kindergarten-First Grade Field Test Data Collection

This application is for clearance for the combined kindergarten and
first grade field test, scheduled to occur in fall 2005. The ECLS-B K-1
national study will include the following components: a direct
assessment of the child's development, an interview with the child's
parent(s), a survey to be completed by the child's father (if funded), a
videotape of the child and the parent (if funded), a questionnaire to be
completed by the child's teacher, and abstraction of information about
the child's school from published sources. However, the ECLS-B K-1 field
test will not include all of these components. Rather, it will be
limited to the following activities: developing the child cognitive
assessment for the national data collection and testing a variety of
school data collection procedures.

The ECLS-B K-1 cognitive assessment for the national study will be
separate two-stage, adaptive instruments that will include three second
stage tests for both language/literacy and mathematics. The second stage
tests in both will be taken from the ECLS-K kindergarten--first grade
instrument and the lowest level test made up from ECLS-B preschool
items. The field test will include a small number of the ECLS-K items
just to ensure that they are operating as expected. The field test
primarily will be devoted to developing the lowest level second stage
test for the national instrument. This lowest level, comprising the
ECLS-B preschool items, is needed for two reasons. First, the items used
in the ECLS-B preschool assessment will be used to link the ECLS-B and
ECLS-K cohorts. Second, the preschool items are needed to ensure that
there are (1) a sufficient number of easier items for children in the
ECLS-B who will be functioning at lower level due to the inclusion of
some younger children (i.e., children born in 2001 who are not yet in
kindergarten) and (2) an oversampling of low-birth-weight children, who
have a higher risk of developmental disabilities. Data from the field
test of the cognitive assessment items will provide information on how
to construct the instrument for the ECLS-B national sample, who will be
seen in the fall of the kindergarten and first grade years.

The school data collection procedures to be tested involve methods for
locating schools and gaining their cooperation, including attaining
approvals from school districts and institutional review boards (IRBs),
examining the utility of collecting teacher reports of students in the
fall, and evaluating the feasibility of collecting administrative data
from existing data bases such as the Common Core of Data (CCD) and the
Private School Universe Survey (PSS). Testing of these procedures is
needed because this round will be the first time that the majority of
children will be in formal educational settings. In addition, it will
also be necessary to evaluate the timing of the teacher data collection.
Teachers who receive the questionnaires earlier in the field test may
have had the children in their classrooms for less than 2 months. This
is a concern because teachers will be asked to answer questions based on
the current school year. For example, some items require teachers to
describe the child's educational experiences, to rank the child's skills
in comparison to his or her classmates, or to provide information on the
child's skills and abilities. We will add one or two items to the
questionnaire to get information on how well teachers felt they could
answer these items.

The ECLS-B K-1 field test is planned for fall 2005. Data will be
collected between late September and mid-November. To meet the
objectives of the field test as described above, completed home visits
with 300 families will be required, 175 from a kindergarten cohort and
125 from a first grade cohort. By carefully selecting the children to be
included in the field test sample, these numbers will be sufficient to
address both of the field test objectives. In order to test the lowest
level of the child assessment, children near the low end of the range of
cognitive functioning for the kindergarten age group must be included;
this includes both younger children as well as children who are at risk
for developmental deficits. In addition, in order to ensure that the
school recruitment and teacher data collection methodologies are
adequately tested, sufficient numbers of older children enrolled in
school must be included; this includes older kindergarten and first
grade children. Keeping these competing objectives in mind, children
will be selected from various sample sources, as described below, to
ensure a broad range of ages and developmental functioning.

The kindergarten cohort will come from two sources: the existing field
test sample and a small newly recruited sample. *Figure A-2* shows the
combined kindergarten and first grade samples. The existing field test
sample consists of 1,247 families who participated in the preschool
field test. Roughly half of these have been in the field test sample
since the 9-month field test; the other half were recruited specifically
for the preschool field test. From these, we will select 161 cases,
which we expect to yield 150 completed home visits (referred to as the
"K-1 field test longitudinal sample"). In order to have adequate
representation of children who are likely to be at the lower end of the
range of functioning, very low-birth-weight children (i.e., children who
may have a higher prevalence of developmental delays) and children born
in the last quarter of 2000 (i.e., children who will be just turning 5
years of age) will be specifically selected from the preschool sample.
To further ensure that a sufficient number of lower-functioning children
are included, cases will be selected such that roughly one-third are
from low-income families in which mothers have limited education and
twice as many children are from the youngest quartile. The decision to
sample in this way is supported by data from the ECLS-K (U.S. Department
of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2000) that
indicate that younger children and children whose mothers have less
education (highly related to income) had lower reading and math scores
than older children and children whose mothers had a college education.

The 161 cases will be supplemented with a newly-recruited sample of 27
kindergartners born in October--December 1999, from which we expect to
complete 25 home visits. These children will be older than those in the
existing field test sample and will enhance our ability to assess the
school recruitment and teacher data collection methodology. Also, they
are needed to mirror the national sample, in which there will be a group
of children who will be older kindergartners during the first grade data
collection. The 27 kindergartners will be recruited at the same time the
first grade field test sample is recruited and will follow the same
protocol. The first grade cases will be newly recruited for the field
test. In September 2005, we will run newspaper advertisements in the
same PSUs from which the kindergarten sample was drawn, asking
interested parents of 6-year-old first graders to call a toll-free
number to enroll in the study. Callers will complete a brief screening
questionnaire so we can collect the date of birth of the child and
confirm the child's entrance into first grade and that both the parent
and child speak English. Assuming that the pool of candidates is large
enough, we will select 38 children born in each of the first three
quarters of 1999 and 21 born in the fourth quarter. From this total of
135 families, we expect to complete home visits with 125. Information
about the school will also be collected during the screening so that
cases representing a variety of types of schools may be purposely
selected into the study within the four age strata.

The number of completed teacher questionnaires assumes that 98% of
parents will consent to their child's teacher completing a
questionnaire, 80% of schools will permit us to contact the teacher, and
65% of teachers will complete and return the questionnaire. These
percentages are all based on previous experience with school-based
surveys.

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc97360900 .anchor}Figure A-2. Combined kindergarten
and first grade

![](media/image2.wmf)

K-1 Data Collection Procedures

***Home Visit.*** In the K-1 field test, a field interviewer will visit
all 300 individuals in their home. The home visit will consist of an
abbreviated interview with the child's primary caregiver (usually the
mother), a direct cognitive assessment of the child, and a 10-minute
videotaped parent-child interaction during play (if this component is
funded). The cognitive assessment will include separate tests of
language/literacy and mathematics that will be administered using
computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI) technology. An abbreviated
parent interview will be conducted in order to obtain basic
demographics, information regarding the child's school placement,
permission to contact the child's teacher, and locating information. If
the parent signs a consent form allowing the teacher to be contacted,
the interviewer will ask for the name, address, and phone number of the
teacher and school the child attends and a self-administered
questionnaire will be mailed to the child's kindergarten or first grade
teacher to complete. The father self-administered questionnaire (if
funded) will not be administered in the field test because it will be
very similar to that which was administered in the preschool round, and
no test of the procedures is needed. The instruments indicated are
described in ***Study Components***, below.

***School and Teacher Data Collection***. In the field test, the
children's teachers will be asked to complete a self-administered
questionnaire (SAQ). Because this component of the study is new to the
ECLS-B K-1, it will require procedural testing. Moreover, the nature of
the study is different than that of the ECLS-K, which was a school based
study. In contrast, the ECLS-B is a home-based study in which it is
possible that we will have only one child per school. Thus, a different
model for securing cooperation and approval has been developed for the
ECLS-B. The field test has been designed so that all phases of the
school component can be tested in an environment mimicking that of the
national study. Based on the 300 field test sample cases, 122 teacher
questionnaires are expected to be completed.

Although there is likely only going to be one child per school and thus
the burden on any one teacher is minimal, gaining access to a child's
teacher without working with the school is often difficult.  The plan is
to test the effectiveness of a "middle of the road" approach to gaining
access to a study child's teacher.  We propose to use a passive consent
process at the state and district levels of the educational system.  A
toll-free number will be provided to school personnel to use to relay
any special requirements they may have for gaining approval to contact
teachers, or to opt out.  Although district-level administrators will be
contacted, recruitment activities will be focused at the school
administrator level, enlisting this person's support for the study by
permitting and facilitating contact with the appropriate teacher.

These phases consist of the following:

-   Contacting states, districts, and schools in spring 2005 to inform
    them of the study and the likelihood that one or more of their
    students are participating in the ECLS-B. Informational packets will
    be sent with a cover letter describing the study and their potential
    role in it, a letter from NCES confirming the validity of the study,
    and a study brochure. Please note that a separate submission for
    clearance will be made for this process, in which copies of the
    materials will be included in the informational packets and the
    semi-structured interview will be conducted with a small (N=20)
    subsample of school administrators.

-   Obtaining school contact information from parents during the parent
    interview and permission to contact the school and teacher (flow
    basis, fall 2005).

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-   Notifying higher levels of the education system that one of their
    schools has a student enrolled in the study; follow-up permissions
    will be sought, if necessary (flow basis, fall 2005).

-   Making telephone contact with schools to confirm the teacher's
    contact information (flow basis, fall 2005).

-   Mailing out questionnaires to teachers (flow basis, fall 2005).

-   Making prompting calls to teachers, as needed (flow basis,
    fall/winter 2005/2006).

-   Receiving and processing completed questionnaires (flow basis,
    fall/winter 2005/2006).

# 2. How, by Whom, and for What Purpose Information Is to Be Used {#how-by-whom-and-for-what-purpose-information-is-to-be-used .ahd12-1}

The purpose of the ECLS-B is to provide a comprehensive, reliable data
set that may be used by NCES and other federal agencies and by other
authorized individuals to describe and understand children's early
development in the context of their family, child care, and early
educational experiences. This is the first study that has followed a
national sample of U.S. children and their families from birth through
the early years of schooling. As such, the ECLS-B answers a need for
better national data that can be used as the basis for decisions to be
made concerning children's care and education. In particular, by
including data regarding children's early development, family
environment, health care, transitions into non-parental care, and early
education, the ECLS-B will enable us to increase our understanding of
the dynamics that lead to differential school success. In doing so,
these data will inform policy-makers in their efforts to improve
children's health, early care, and education that are linked to
subsequent school success.

Because the ECLS-B measures key developmental milestones as they occur
throughout early childhood, the data provide a more accurate picture of
children's skills and experiences than would be possible with a
retrospective data collection. Thus, the ECLS-B data will permit a
sequential examination of early child development and its context.
Moreover, as a longitudinal study with multiple measurements of
developmental achievements, family environment, and child care, the
ECLS-B provides a data set that will allow the study of growth rates
over time and those factors that are associated with differences in
children's rates of growth. ECLS-B will provide the research community
an unequaled set of data for years to come. By design, many of the
questions in the ECLS-B preschool parent interview are taken from the
ECLS-K. In addition, there are a number of questions in the preschool
child cognitive assessment from the ECLS-K cognitive assessment. These
common questions will permit data from the two cohorts to be linked.
This linking strategy will make it possible to compare data from the two
data sets to form a single, synthetic cohort, thus allowing a
comprehensive portrait of children's developmental status from birth
through fifth grade.

The ECLS-B also includes a variety of items from other national studies
such as the National Maternal and Infant Health Survey (NMIHS), the
National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), the National Health and
Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), the Early Head Start Research and
Evaluation Project (EHS), the National Household Education Survey
(NHES), and the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development
(SECCYD). The inclusion of these items will permit comparison on
variables such as health status, paternal involvement, and child care.
One of the most important contributions of the ECLS-B is the ability to
examine the cognitive, social, and health outcomes of children from
various social groups and birth histories. Chinese and American Indian
children were oversampled, as were twins and children who were low birth
weight (1,500--2,500 grams) and very low birth weight (\< 1,500 grams).
In addition, large percentages of African American and Hispanic children
are included in the sample. The racial/ethnic diversity will allow the
examination of how cultural variations in family settings and early
education influence developmental outcomes. The inclusion of a large
sample of low-birth-weight children will enable analyses of how children
who are medically at high risk develop and adapt in comparison to
children without such histories. Finally, the twin samples will provide
an important database for researchers interested in examining genetic
and environmental influences on cognitive, social, and health
characteristics. Because the twins were part of a randomly sampled
cohort, they provide a unique data set to examine these issues. In fact,
there are few U.S. twin samples as that in large as ECLS-B.

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc110858171 .anchor}Study Components

The kindergarten and first grade rounds of the ECLS-B will address the
issues and questions presented above by collecting data across a variety
of domains from multiple perspectives. However, the field test is not
designed to pilot all procedures and instruments that will be used in
the national data collection. Rather, the purpose of the combined
kindergarten and first grade field test is to develop the child
cognitive assessment and to test school data collection procedures. In
order to achieve these ends, the field test will include a home visit to
approximately 300 kindergarten and first grade children in which the
children will be assessed, the parents interviewed, and, if funded, a
videotape made of the child and his or her parent. In addition, the
field test will also ask the child's kindergarten or first grade teacher
to complete a self-administered questionnaire, if the parent agrees. A
summary of each instrument's constructs is presented below in ***table
A-2***.

**Abbreviated Parent Interview.** The parent interview that will be
administered in the national data collection for the kindergarten and
first grade rounds includes a variety of topics, many of which were
included in previous rounds. Because it is so similar to the preschool
version, the entire version will not be used in the field test. Rather,
an abbreviated version of the parent interview that focuses on the
information needed for other components of the study will be
administered in the field test. This will be a computer-assisted
personal interview (CAPI) of each child's parent or legal guardian; in
most cases the interview will be with the mother. The questions will
include basic demographic information on the respondent and child that
will be used to ensure that the children in the field test are diverse
with respect to race, ethnicity, and parental education. The abbreviated
parent interview will also ask about the child's enrollment in school
and request permission to send the child's teacher a questionnaire to
complete; this information is necessary to be able to identify and
contact the school. The final section includes locator information for
future contact, if needed. Administration time for the Abbreviated
Parent CAPI is designed to be 12 minutes.

**Child Direct Assessment.** The child direct assessment to be used in
the kindergarten and first grade national data collection will include
assessments of cognitive and motor skills and measurements of physical
growth (i.e., height, weight, middle and upper arm circumference and,
for the very low-birth-weight sample, head circumference). However,
aside from a few motor items to be used as a motivator, only cognitive
items will be administered in the field test. The gross and fine motor
assessment will not be included in the field test because the
instruments used in the ECLS-K and in the ECLS-B preschool assessment
will be used in the national data collection, and there will be an
adequate test of these procedures in the preschool data collection.
Similarly, the physical measurements to be used in the national data
collection are identical to those that will be collected in the
preschool round and do not need to be field-tested again.

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc97360906 .anchor}Table A-2. Components of field
test instruments

+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
| Field Test        | Major Components      | Constructs               |
| Instrument        |                       |                          |
+===================+=======================+==========================+
| **Abbreviated     | Demographic           | Race/Ethnicity           |
| Parent            | Information           |                          |
| Interview**       |                       | Parent Education         |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Child's Age              |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
|                   | School Enrollment     | Contact Information      |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Permission               |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
|                   | Locator Information   |                          |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
| **Child           | Language              | English Language         |
| Assessments**     |                       | Competence               |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Receptive Vocabulary     |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
|                   | Literacy              | Phonological Awareness   |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Letter and Letter-Sound  |
|                   |                       | Knowledge                |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Print Conventions        |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Word Recognition         |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Word Production          |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
|                   | Mathematics           | Number Sense             |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Counting                 |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Operations               |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Geometry                 |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Patterns                 |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Measurement              |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
| **Two Bag         | Parent-Child          | Affective Quality of     |
| Task---Videotaped | Interaction           | Interactions             |
| Interactions\***  |                       |                          |
|                   | Book Reading          | Cognitive Stimulation    |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
| **Teacher         | Target Child's Social | Social and Behavioral    |
| Questionnaire**   | Development           | Development              |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
|                   | Target Child's        | Literacy                 |
|                   | Academic Ability      |                          |
|                   |                       | Mathematics              |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
|                   | Class Characteristics | Race/Ethnicity           |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Class Size               |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Average Academic Ratings |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Average Behavior         |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Special Needs            |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
|                   | Program               |                          |
|                   | Characteristics       |                          |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
|                   | Class Activities      | Interest Centers         |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Time Spent on            |
|                   |                       | Lessons/Projects         |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Physical Activities      |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Resources                |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
|                   | Instructional         | Reading                  |
|                   | Activities/           |                          |
|                   | Curricular Focus      | Math                     |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Computers                |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Science                  |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Social Studies           |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
|                   | Evaluation            | Teacher Rating           |
|                   |                       | Procedures               |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | National Assessments     |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
|                   | Kindergarten          |                          |
|                   | Transition            |                          |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
|                   | Attitudes             | Readiness for            |
|                   |                       | Kindergarten             |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Teaching                 |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
|                   | Teacher Background    | Demographics             |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Teaching Certification   |
|                   |                       |                          |
|                   |                       | Education/Staff          |
|                   |                       | Development              |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
| \*If funded       |                       |                          |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+

As previously indicated, one of the major goals of the field test is to
develop the child assessment instrument for the national study. As in
the ECLS-K, a single instrument will be used in both the kindergarten
and the first grade rounds of the ECLS-B national data collection. The
child cognitive instrument to be developed will be a two-stage adaptive
assessment in which the first part will be a routing test. There will be
three second-stage tests that will be appropriate for the individual
child's developmental level. The two upper-level tests will be taken
from the existing ECLS-K instrument. The lowest level will be developed
using items from the ECLS-B preschool instrument. The field test version
of the K-1 instrument will include both language/literacy and
mathematics items, with approximately 50 items per domain and sections
of the *preLAS^®^2000*, that will be given to all children, regardless
of their English language proficiency.

The goal of the field test is to ensure that there are sufficient items
from both the ECLS-B preschool and ECLS-K kindergarten-first grade
assessments for the ECLS. Having a common set of items across the ECLS-B
and ECLS-K instruments will facilitate this comparison. Thus, the field
test will enable us to (1) select and test ECLS-B preschool items that
are candidates for inclusion in the K-1 assessment and (2) examine the
performance of children on a subset of the ECLS-K items so that we can
anchor the statistics to a scale we will be able to interpret.

The field test version of the child assessment is designed to take no
more than 1 hour. The 300 children, a sample sufficient to examine the
item characteristics, will receive all items. As indicated, most of the
items will be taken from either the ECLS-K K-1 or the ECLS-B preschool
assessment. In addition, a few items from the *Comprehensive Test of
Print Processing* (CTOPP) will be added to ensure that the field test
has some items of phonological awareness appropriate for the first grade
sample. The items from the ECLS-B preschool assessment will be those at
the upper end of difficulty. Item difficulty and IRT parameters obtained
from the preschool field test will be examined to determine the best
items to include in the K-1 field test.

Children with special health needs will be included in the assessment
process. As in the preschool field test, we will not include children
who require Braille, sign language, or interpreters. The children will
be administered the instrument without any modifications, other than
breaks needed to facilitate cooperation, positioning of materials, or
use of equipment such as readers or magnifiers that they typically use
(such equipment will not be provided by the field interviewer). As in
the preschool assessment, we will use an Assessability Form to query the
parent regarding the child's capacity to be assessed. This is a standard
set of questions that asks whether a child demonstrates any
developmental difficulties that would preclude him or her from being
meaningfully tested without accommodations such as sign language or
Braille. This set of questions is asked in a computer-assisted format,
with the computer determining whether the child will undergo the
assessment based on the parents' responses. It should be noted that the
number of children in the field test who have disabilities is likely to
be small and will not permit analysis of their performance as a separate
group. In the preschool field test, only two children in the field test
sample were excluded from the cognitive assessment. One child was blind
and the other child was deaf; both children required modifications that
we could not provide (i.e., sign language and Braille administrations).
However, based on the Assessability Form data, there were 59 children
whose parents reported a disability requiring an Individualized
Education Plan (IEP) or an Individualize Family Service Plan (IFSP).
Most of these children had speech and language disabilities, and all
were able to be assessed..

**Videotaped Parent-Child Interaction.** The videotaped parent-child
interaction, should it be funded by ACYF, is a 10-minute sample of a
naturalistic play situation between the parent (usually the mother) and
child using the Two Bags task procedure that was used in the 2-year and
preschool rounds. Videotapes of parent-child interaction will be made
during the home visit and coded later. Each mother-child (or
guardian-child) dyad will be videotaped engaging in unstructured
interaction, using play materials contained in two bags. One bag will
include materials for a pretend birthday party, and the other will
contain a picture book. The field test will provide the opportunity to
confirm that materials are age-appropriate. Fifty videotapes will be
collected and coded. These 50 tapes will be used to refine and extend
existing rating systems so as to be age-appropriate for mother-child
interaction with kindergarten and first grade children. For purposes of
longitudinal analysis, the videotapes will be coded using the same
constructs as in earlier rounds of data collection for the ECLS-B, with
modifications that reflect interactions with children in kindergarten
and first grade. Ratings will include both the effective quality of
mother-child interaction and interactions around book reading. The field
test is necessary to finalize both the protocol and the ratings to be
used.

The ECLS-B option to videotape parent-child interaction in kindergarten
and first grade represents an important opportunity to study
parent-child interaction and language as children make the transition to
elementary school. Few studies have been carried out focusing on
parent-child interaction in the first years of elementary school, and
those studies that have been carried out focus on middle class samples
rather than a diverse sample of children and families (Weinfield, Ogawa,
& Egeland, 2002). There has been no study of parent-child interaction
during the early elementary school years carried out in a representative
sample of young children. Further, the fact that longitudinal data on
parent-child interaction would exist for sample members would make it
possible to ask such important questions as (1) whether the same or
different aspects of parent-child interaction emerge in the preschool
and early school years as related to adjustment and early progress in
school; (2) whether there are differences in the aspects of parent-child
interaction that relate to academic progress and adjustment in the early
years of schooling for key population subgroups; and (3) whether there
is continuity in parent-child interaction from the preschool to the
early school years, or whether the transition to formal schooling is a
point of substantial change in parent-child interaction and use of
language in interaction. The field test is crucial for developing the
protocol and refining the rating system.

**Teacher Self-Administered Questionnaire (SAQ).** The teacher SAQ is
new to the ECLS-B. The content of the instrument overlaps with the
teacher questionnaire used in the kindergarten and first grade years of
the ECLS-K study. Common items are also shared with the version of the
Early Care Education Provider Interview to be used in the ECLS-B
kindergarten year (but not field tested), so that similar types of
information are obtained on children regardless of the settings in which
they spend their time outside the home. The questionnaire includes
sections querying the curriculum, classroom practices, teacher
characteristics, and attitudes as well as an evaluation of the target
child's academic and behavioral competence. It is designed to take 20
minutes. The possibility of conducting the school portion of the study
over the Web has been discussed. However, the ability of kindergarten
and first grade teachers to conveniently access the Web is not certain.
To gather information on the feasibility of using web-based instruments
for the national studies, a few questions will be added regarding
respondents' Web access and preference for a web-based or mail survey.

The teacher SAQ is being tested for two primary reasons. The first is to
evaluate the school recruitment procedures developed for this study. The
second is to evaluate the timing of the teacher data collection.
Teachers who receive the SAQ earlier in the field test may have had less
than 2 months' experience with the children in their classrooms. This is
a concern because teachers will be asked to answer questions based on
the current school year. For example, some items require teachers to
rank the child's skills in comparison to his or her classmates, or to
provide information on the child's level of skills and abilities. One or
two items will be added to the SAQ to get information on how well
teachers feel they can answer these items.

**Uses of Field Test Data**. In summary, the field test data collected
from parents (usually mothers), children, and teachers will be used to

-   finalize the K-1 child cognitive assessment;

-   understand the best methods of securing the cooperation of school
    districts, schools, and teachers for the national data collection;

-   examine whether fall is the optimal time is to query teachers about
    student performance and classroom practices, and

-   refine procedures for the videotape protocol and scoring of
    parent-child interaction, if this component is funded by ACYF.

# 3. Use of Automated, Electronic, Mechanical, or Other Technological Collection Techniques {#use-of-automated-electronic-mechanical-or-other-technological-collection-techniques .ahd12-1}

Data collection for the kindergarten and first grade field test of the
ECLS-B will use CAPI to administer the abbreviated parent interview and
the child direct assessment. Use of CAI technology is designed to make
the case management, interviewing, and data checking more efficient and
ultimately to reduce respondent burden. For instance, CAI technology
allows data to be preloaded, eliminating the need to ask some
information or to skip out of sections. Computer screens provide
relevant prompts to collect certain information and help screens to
define terms or words. The CAI systems are particularly useful when
questionnaires contain complex skip patterns, because respondents are
automatically routed to the appropriate question seamlessly, reducing
error. This feature will be essential for the child cognitive
assessment. For instance, stop rules are programmed into the child
assessment so that when a child fails a pre-determined number of items,
he or she is routed to the next section automatically. The computer will
score the *preLAS^®^2000* to determine whether the child can be assessed
in English and will also determine when stop rules can be initiated.
With computer scoring, there is no guesswork regarding the appropriate
decisions about what items are to be administered. Should the father
option be funded, the questionnaires will use paper-and-pencil methods
and will be processed using TELEform scanning technology.

# 4. Efforts to Identify Duplication {#efforts-to-identify-duplication .ahd12-1}

The previous OMB submissions have indicated that the ECLS-B was designed
to supplement the ECLS-K by providing a downward age extension to the
national cohort of school age children. In other words, data collected
from the ECLS-B will not duplicate those collected in the ECLS-K.
Rather, by collecting data from children from birth through 6 years of
age, the ECLS-B will provide information covering the critical early
years of development that will elucidate our understanding of the
precursors of school readiness. By using many of the same constructs,
questions, and cognitive items, it will be possible to statistically
link the two cohorts, forming a synthetic cohort and thereby providing a
portrait of children extending from birth through high school
completion. The overlap between the ECLS-K and the ECLS-B in content is
most apparent in the child cognitive assessment to be used in
kindergarten and first grade. The completed instrument will include two
levels that were in the ECLS-K K-1 instrument as well as other items
that were included on the ECLS-B preschool assessment that were taken or
adapted from the ECLS-K. This is a necessary feature for linking the two
cohorts. The field test, for which we are requesting clearance, is only
testing those aspects for which we have no previous data---namely, the
lowest level of the child cognitive assessment and the school
procedures.

Other large national studies of children transitioning into kindergarten
include Head Start's FACES and Impact Study and IES' Preschool
Curriculum Evaluation Research program. Many of the same constructs and
questions are used across the ECLS-B and these studies for the purpose
of having a basis of comparison among these different cohorts. However,
the ECLS-B is the only nationally representative cohort (of children
born in 2001) and is the only one that has followed children from birth.
Thus, the ECLS-B provides researchers with a qualitatively different
data set.

# 5. Impact on Small Businesses or Small Entities  {#impact-on-small-businesses-or-small-entities .ahd12-1}

We do not anticipate any impact on small business or entities as a
result of this field test.

# 6. Consequences of Not Conducting the Data Collection {#consequences-of-not-conducting-the-data-collection .ahd12-1}

The ECLS-B has been designed as a longitudinal study, with multiple
measures of the same constructs over time. In fact, the data collected
during the kindergarten round are critical to the study, having been
targeted from the inception of the program. That is, the data collected
in kindergarten and first grade rounds will be the outcome points that
will enable researchers to understand (1) the role that parents/family
play in helping prepare children for formal schooling and (2) the
developmental relationship children's participation in early care and
education arrangements has on children's readiness for school. In
addition, the data collected in kindergarten and first grade will permit
the ECLS-K and the ECLS-B cohorts to be statistically linked and hence
able to be used to answer questions regarding change in children's
readiness for school over time. In addition, without data from the
kindergarten and the first grade rounds, the ECLS-B data set would be
very limited in the kinds of analyses that are possible. For instance,
growth-curve analysis represents a powerful way to study development and
change, but it requires data points throughout the period of interest.

Without the K-1 field test, it would be difficult to develop a child
cognitive assessment that would be appropriate for the entire national
sample. In addition, without a field test, none of the school and
teacher procedures would be tested and modified, if necessary. For
instance, there would be no guidance regarding the kinds of school
recruitment issues that are likely to occur in the national study or the
timing for sending the questionnaire to the teachers. Moving into a
full-scale data collection with such tests would subject the study to
unknown perils. The smallest number of cases that will yield meaningful
results was determined so that the burden on families and schools will
be kept to a minimum.

# 7. Special Circumstances {#special-circumstances .ahd12-1}

There are no special circumstances related to this data collection.

# 8. Outside Consultation {#outside-consultation .ahd12-1}

As indicated in section 4, the ECLS-B represents a collaborative effort
by health, education, and human services agencies. Sponsors include the
U.S. Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education
Statistics (NCES), the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) of
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute
of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and other components of
the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Other sponsors within the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services include the Administration on
Children, Youth and Families (ACYF), the Maternal and Child Health
Bureau (MCHB) of the Health Resources and Services Administration
(HRSA), the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and
Evaluation (ASPE), and the Office of Minority Health. The Economic
Research Service (ERS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and
the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) and the Office of Indian
Education (OIE) of the U.S. Department of Education are also
participating sponsors for the study. Individuals from these agencies
participated in meetings to solicit their input into decisions regarding
sampling, instrument development, and timing of the data collections.
Interagency agreements exist between NCES and the following other
federal agencies: the Demographic and Behavioral Sciences Branch, Center
for Population Research, NICHD; NCHS; ACYF; Economic Research Service,
USDA; OSEP; MCHB; and ASPE. The co-sponsors met as recently as December
2004 and are consulted on a regular basis. They reviewed the instruments
and provided their feedback.

In addition, a technical review panel (TRP) was assembled and has
provided review and comment on the study design and the assessment and
survey instruments. Eight TRP meetings were held between 1998 and 2004;
the most recent was held in December 2004. **Table *A-3*** provides the
names of the individuals on the TRP and their areas of expertise.
Finally, there are a number of consultants to the study who are
providing their expertise regarding assessment, observational protocols,
and psychometrics. Dr. Philip Dale (of the University of Missouri) is
working directly with RTI regarding assessment of language issues. Dr.
Rebecca Fauth (of Teachers College, Columbia University) and Dr. Jeanne
De Temple (formerly of Harvard University) have provided consultation to
RTI for coding videotape interactions and for training coders.

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  []{#__RefHeading___Toc97360907                                   
  .anchor}Table A-3. Members of                                    
  the ECLS-B technical review                                      
  panel (TRP)                                                      
  -------------------------------- ------------------------------- -----------------------
  TRP Member Name                  Affiliation                     Area of Expertise

  Martha Abbott-Shim               Quality Counts                  Quality of child care

  Emily Arcia                      Miami-Dade School System        Latino family issues,
                                                                   attention deficit
                                                                   hyperactivity disorder
                                                                   (ADHD)

  Susan Bredekamp                  Child Development Associates\   School readiness,
                                   Council for Early Childhood     policy issues
                                   Recognition                     

  Martha J. Cox                    Department of Psychology\       Child-parent
                                   University of North Carolina at relationships and
                                   Chapel Hill\                    children's security of
                                   Frank Porter Graham Child       attachment
                                   Development Center              

  Susan Fowler                     University of Illinois at       Children's language
                                   Urbana-Champaign\               acquisition and use
                                   College of Education            through testing and
                                                                   observation

  Thomas Jordan                    Chesterfield, MO                Longitudinal studies of
                                                                   children

  Milton Kotelchuck                Department of Maternal and      Pediatrics and child
                                   Child Health\                   health policy
                                   Boston University School of     
                                   Public Health                   

  Barbara Alexander Pan            Harvard Graduate School of      Conversation and
                                   Education                       language between
                                                                   parents and children

  Elizabeth Peters                 Department of Policy Analysis   Economics of the family
                                   and Management                  including child
                                                                   support, child care,
                                                                   marriage, and divorce

  Suzanne Randolph                 University of Maryland\         Child development among
                                   Department of Family Studies    African-American
                                                                   families, parent-child
                                                                   interaction

  Aline Sayer                      Amherst, MA                     Multilevel modeling,
                                                                   growth curve analysis

  Susan Speiker                    University of Washington        Special education,
                                                                   policy and programs

  Barbara Wasik                    The Johns Hopkins University    Direct assessment and
                                                                   testing of children's
                                                                   language

  Barry Zuckerman                  Boston University School of     Pediatrics and child
                                   Medicine\                       health policy
                                   Department of Pediatrics        
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# 9. Justification of Compensation {#justification-of-compensation .ahd12-1}

> Each of the respondents will receive modest compensation for their
> time. Payments to respondents are primarily to help defray the time
> and expense required by their participating in the study, since their
> participation is voluntary. The schedule of compensation is indicated
> in table A-4. These amounts are modest given the time required by the
> participants. Because many schools prohibit teachers from receiving
> compensation in the form of cash, we will give them gift cards. These
> gift cards can be redeemed for merchandise such as books from
> Scholastic Press. The value of the compensation to teachers was
> reduced from \$20.00 in the ECLS-B preschool national study to \$10.00
> in the ECLS-B K-1 field test because the burden of participation is
> estimated to be less. .The compensation for the teacher survey is less
> than that of the Early Care and Education Provider (ECEP) interview.
> Moreover, because the child care provider must spend time on the phone
> with a field interviewer rather than complete a paper form at their
> convenience, the burden on teachers is greater. 

  -------------------------------- -------------- -------------- --------------
  []{#__RefHeading___Toc97360908                                 
  .anchor}Table A-4. Schedule of                                 
  compensation for ECLS-B                                        

  Study component                  Compensation   Compensation   Compensation
                                   in 2-year wave in preschool   in K-1 field
                                                  field test     test

  Abbreviated parent interview     \$30           \$30           \$30

  Child assessment                 Book           Book           Book

  Teacher self administered        \$20           \$20           \$10
  questionnaire (previously the                                  
  ECEP interview)                                                
  -------------------------------- -------------- -------------- --------------

# 10. Assurance of Confidentiality {#assurance-of-confidentiality .ahd12-1}

All data collection activities will be conducted in full compliance with
U.S. Department of Education regulations to maintain the confidentiality
of data obtained on private persons and to protect the rights and
welfare of human research subjects as contained in U.S. Department of
Education regulations. Respondents will receive information about
confidentiality protections when they sign their consent form, as part
of the interviewers' introductory comments. Respondents will be informed
that all of the information they provide will be kept strictly
confidential and that the results of the study will be presented only in
aggregate form. All field data collectors will be knowledgeable about
confidentiality procedures and will be prepared to describe them in full
detail, if necessary, or to answer any related questions raised by
respondents. The following procedures are routinely employed by RTI to
carry out confidentiality assurances:

-   All project employees sign a confidentiality pledge and a notarized
    affidavit of nondisclosure that emphasizes the importance of
    confidentiality and describes their obligations.

-   Access to the file linking respondents' sample identification
    numbers and item data with their contact information is limited to
    project staff who have signed confidentiality agreements. Access is
    regulated by the provisions of the RTI ECLS-B Data Security Plan,
    including password control.

-   Hardcopy documents are stored in locked files and cabinets.
    Discarded material is shredded.

-   Computer files are protected with passwords, and access is limited
    to specific users.

The National Center of Health Statistics (NCHS) Ethics Review Board
(ERB) will review the data collection protocol and the procedures used
to ensure confidentiality. The NCHS ERB is responsible for ensuring all
human subject protections. The ERB is involved because the ECLS-B cohort
was selected from birth certificates that were provided to NCHS from the
states, and the ERB has maintained its oversight. In addition, several
states also require that their IRBs review the ECLS-B protocol because
they provided the birth certificates.

Field data collectors will be responsibile for obtaining informed
written consent from parents for their interview, for the child's
assessment, and to contact the child's teacher. The informed consent
form will explain the goals of the research program and will state how
confidentiality is ensured. In addition, the IRBs of several states will
also review the data collection protocol and informed consent
procedures.

NCES will comply with the Privacy Act of 1974 \[5 USC 552a\], Privacy
Act Regulations \[34 CFR Part 5b\], Education Sciences Reform Act of
2002 (ESRA 2002), Computer Security Act of 1987, USA Patriot Act of
2001, E-Government Act of 2002 \[Title V, Subtitle A, CIP 2002\], NCES
*Restricted Use Data Procedures Manual*, and the NCES *Standards and
Policies*. RTI and all its subcontractors are required to comply with
the applicable provisions of the legislation, regulations, and
guidelines and to undertake all necessary safeguards for individuals
against invasions of privacy.

All contractor staff members working on the ECLS-B project or having
access to the data (including monitoring of interviews and assessments)
are required to sign the NCES Affidavit of Nondisclosure, in addition to
the RTI Confidentiality Pledge. Notarized affidavits are kept on file at
RTI, and documentation is submitted to NCES on a regular basis. After
data collection, confidentiality is fully protected through the use of
password-protected data files, and access to all physical written or
electronic media containing individually identifiable data are strictly
controlled.

Because this is a field test, no data files will be created for public
use.

# 11. Justification for Sensitive Questions {#justification-for-sensitive-questions .ahd12-1}

No sensitive questions are included in the kindergarten and first grade
rounds. Parents are only asked demographic, school contact, and locator
information. Parents will be advised during the informed consent process
of the voluntary nature of participation and their right to refuse to
answer any question. They will also be assured that the responses will
be held in the strictest confidence, with no names attached to any data.
In addition, the primary caregiver will also have the opportunity to
consent separately for the videotaping. That is, we will not conduct
these additional parts of the ECLS-B K-1 data collection without the
explicit informed consent of the primary caregiver. Moreover, our
interviewers will all be trained to be sensitive when asking about the
nonresident father.

# 12. Estimates of Hour Burden {#estimates-of-hour-burden .ahd12-1}

Table A-5 provides the estimate of time burden for the field test
instrument.

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc97360909 .anchor}Table A-5. Estimate of time
burden for the field test instrument.

  -------------------- -------------- ------------------- -----------------
                       Field Test                         

                       Number of      Average burden      Total burden
                       respondents    hours/\             hours
                                      response            

  **Instrument**                                          497

  Parent abbreviated   300            .20                 60
  interview                                               

  Child direct         300            1                   300
  assessment                                              

  Parent-child         300            0.17                50
  videotape\*                                             

  Teacher              262            0.33                87
  self-administered                                       
  questionnaire                                           
  -------------------- -------------- ------------------- -----------------

\* If funded

# 13. Estimate for the Total Annual Cost Burden to Respondents or Record­-keepers Resulting from the Collection of Information {#estimate-for-the-total-annual-cost-burden-to-respondents-or-record-keepers-resulting-from-the-collection-of-information .ahd12-1}

There are no costs to individual respondents other than their time to
participate in the study. Nor are there any recordkeeping requirements
associated with the ECLS-B.

# 14. Estimate of Annualized Costs to Federal Government {#estimate-of-annualized-costs-to-federal-government .ahd12-1}

NCES issued a call for a capability statement from institutions holding
a Multiple Award Task Order (MATO) with the U.S. Department of Education
to select a contractor for the K-1 wave of the ECLS-B. RTI was awarded a
5-year task-order contract that is being funded incrementally.
Approximately 93% of the level of effort of this award is directly
related to the collection, analysis, and reporting of the data described
herein. Thus, with a 5-year award of \$21,553,728 and the portion of the
total award for field test activities projected to be \$1,798,480, the
estimated cost to the government for designing and administering the
surveys and assessments, processing and analyzing the field test data,
and summarizing results and preparing field test reports is \$1,672,586.
The average annual cost related to collection, analysis, and reporting
of the field test data is \$955,764 These costs include personnel,
benefits, travel, overhead, supplies, and indirect costs. The estimate
is based on expected time to produce, train, and administer the
instruments and to analyze and report on the data. These time estimates
are based on RTI's previous experience managing data collection efforts
of this type.

# 15. Reasons for Program Change {#reasons-for-program-change .ahd12-1}

Although the ECLS-B has previously received OMB clearance, it was for
earlier waves of the study. Most recently, OMB clearance was received
for the preschool data collection; the number is 1850-0756 with an
expiration date of August 31, 2007. Thus, this is a revised submission
for the combined kindergarten and first grade field test.

# 16. Plans for Tabulation and Publication of Data {#plans-for-tabulation-and-publication-of-data .ahd12-1}

Although there are plans to disseminate three major reports regarding
the kindergarten and first grade round national data collection process,
which will be referred to as the field test, the field test report
itself will not be disseminated. Rather, it will be an internal report
used to document the field test experience, findings, and
recommendations for the national study. Specific topics for the field
test report will include the following:

-   Hiring and Training Field Staff

-   Operational Issues Associated with the Home Visit

    -   Panel Maintenance Activities

    -   Field Test Sample

    -   Field Production and Completion Rates

    -   Teacher Permission and Contact Information

-   Child Assessment

    -   Cognitive Assessment Item Selection

    -   Videotaping Procedures (if funded)

-   School and Teacher Data Collection

    -   Difficulties in Recruitment

    -   Response Rates

    -   Analysis of Timing

# 17. Request for Approval to Not Display OMB Approval Expiration Date {#request-for-approval-to-not-display-omb-approval-expiration-date .ahd12-1}

The present submission does not request such approval. The expiration
date will be displayed along with the OMB approval number.

# 18. Exceptions to the Certification Statement in Item 19 of OMB Form 83-1 {#exceptions-to-the-certification-statement-in-item-19-of-omb-form-83-1 .ahd12-1}

No exceptions to the certification statement are requested or required.

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc110858188 .anchor}Section B. Collection of
Information Employing Statistical Techniques

This submission is requesting clearance for the kindergarten and first
grade field test. A separate submission will request clearance for the
national study. As described above, there are two main purposes of the
field test: (1) to develop a lowest level for the child cognitive
assessment and (2) to test a variety of school data collection
procedures, including methods for locating schools and gaining their
cooperation (including attaining approvals from school districts and
IRBs) and examining the utility of collecting teacher reports of
students in the fall.

# Respondent Universe and Sampling Selection to Be Used {#respondent-universe-and-sampling-selection-to-be-used .ahd12-1}

The field test will comprise kindergarten and first grade children.

a\. Kindergarten

A total of 175 completed home visits from kindergarten children are
projected. This sample will come from two sources:

-   the existing field test sample who were last seen as part of the
    preschool field test, of whom 161 will be fielded with 150 expected
    completes, and

-   a small newly recruited sample of 27 kindergarten children in
    kindergarten, who are older children with fall births, with 25
    expected completed home interviews.

b\. First Grade

> The first grade cohort will all be newly recruited. One hundred
> thirty-five first grade children will be recruited, and 125 are
> expected to complete the home visit.
>
> See ***figure A.1*** for a schematic of the field test sample.

# 2. Procedures for Collection of Information  {#procedures-for-collection-of-information .ahd12-1}

a\. Statistical Methodology for Stratification and Sample Selection

The existing field test sample consists of 1,247 families who
participated in the ECLS-B preschool field test. Roughly half of these
have been in the field test sample since the 9-month field test; the
other half was recruited specifically for the preschool field test. From
these 1,247 cases, 161 will be selected. A 93% response rate is
expected, yielding 150 completed home visits. ***Table B.1*** shows the
types of children who will be selected from the preschool sample in
order that children likely to be at the lower end of the range of
functioning are adequately represented (i.e., the very low-birth-weight
\[VLBW\] children and those born in the last quarter of 2000), as are
those at a higher level of functioning (i.e., those enrolled in
kindergarten). To further ensure that a sufficient number of
lower-functioning children are included, cases will be selected such
that roughly one-third are from low-income families and twice as many
children are from the youngest quartile as from any other quartile.

The 161 cases will be supplemented with a newly-recruited sample, also
shown in ***table B.1***, of 27 kindergartners born in October--December
1999, from which 25 home visits are expected to be completed. These
children are older than those in the existing field test sample and will
enhance the ability to assess the school recruitment and teacher data
collection methodology. Also, they are needed to mirror the national
sample in which there will be a group of children who are older but in
kindergarten during the first grade round. This sample will be recruited
at the same time the first grade field test sample, detailed below, is
recruited and will follow the same protocol.

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc97360910 .anchor}Table B.1. Strata from which
children will be selected for the kindergarten cohort of the K-1 field
test

  ---------------------- ------------------- -------------- ------------ -------------
  **Strata**             **Dates of Birth**  **Assumption   **Number     **Home Visits
                                             Regarding      Selected**   Assumed
                                             Enrollment in               Completed**
                                             Kindergarten                
                                             in 2005**                   

  **Very low birth       January--March 2000 50% yes;\      26-27        25
  weight (VLBW) children                     50% no                      
  from the original                                                      
  field test                                                             
  longitudinal sample**                                                  

  **Non-VLBW children    January--March 2000 Yes            26-27        25
  from the original                                                      
  field test                                                             
  longitudinal sample or                                                 
  preschool supplemental                                                 
  sample**                                                               

  **Children from the    April--June 2000    Yes            26-27        25
  preschool supplemental                                                 
  sample**                                                               

  **Children from the    July--September     Yes            26-27        25
  preschool supplemental 2000                                            
  sample**                                                               

  **Children from the    October--December   No             55           50
  preschool supplemental 2000                                            
  sample**                                                               

  **Newly recruited      October--December   Yes            26-27        25
  sample of              1999                                            
  kindergartners**                                                       
  ---------------------- ------------------- -------------- ------------ -------------

Within these strata, selections will also be made such that a variety of
types of schools (large/small, public/private, religious/non-religious)
and districts (large/small, urban/rural) are included, as well as cases
in which no advance information is available regarding schooling plans.
The existing field test sample was located in 17 primary sampling units
(PSUs) across eight states. The 161 cases who will be selected from the
existing field test sample will be chosen from eight of the PSUs based
on several factors that include cost (i.e., elimination of those PSUs
that are in California), the types of school districts present in the
PSU, the number and age distribution of the children in the sample in
the PSU, and, to some extent, convenience. In each PSU, 20
English-speaking families will be selected based on the factors
discussed above. ***Table B.2*** shows the birth date distributions by
PSU of the children completing the preschool assessment. As the exhibit
shows, in most cases the numbers are such that an adequate pool is
available to choose from across the strata listed in ***table B.1.***

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc97360911 .anchor}Table B.2. Child assessments
completed in the preschool field test, by PSU and month of birth (Year
2000), in those PSUs that may be a part of the K-1 field test

<table style="width:100%;">
<colgroup>
<col style="width: 22%" />
<col style="width: 6%" />
<col style="width: 6%" />
<col style="width: 6%" />
<col style="width: 6%" />
<col style="width: 6%" />
<col style="width: 6%" />
<col style="width: 5%" />
<col style="width: 6%" />
<col style="width: 6%" />
<col style="width: 6%" />
<col style="width: 6%" />
<col style="width: 6%" />
</colgroup>
<tbody>
<tr class="odd">
<td></td>
<td><strong>Jan</strong></td>
<td><strong>Feb</strong></td>
<td><strong>Mar</strong></td>
<td><strong>Apr</strong></td>
<td><strong>May</strong></td>
<td><strong>Jun</strong></td>
<td><strong>Jul</strong></td>
<td><strong>Aug</strong></td>
<td><strong>Sep</strong></td>
<td><strong>Oct</strong></td>
<td><strong>Nov</strong></td>
<td><strong>Dec</strong></td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td><h5 id="columbia-sc">Columbia, SC</h5></td>
<td>11</td>
<td>7</td>
<td>11</td>
<td>14</td>
<td>4</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>6</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>2</td>
<td>8</td>
<td>2</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td><strong>Denver, CO</strong></td>
<td>12</td>
<td>9</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>4</td>
<td>7</td>
<td>4</td>
<td>2</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>2</td>
<td>0</td>
<td>0</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td><strong>El Paso, TX</strong></td>
<td>9</td>
<td>7</td>
<td>12</td>
<td>14</td>
<td>2</td>
<td>6</td>
<td>13</td>
<td>7</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>11</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>4</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td><strong>Fredericksburg, VA</strong></td>
<td>18</td>
<td>11</td>
<td>20</td>
<td>18</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>4</td>
<td>4</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>6</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>0</td>
<td>0</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td><strong>Greenville, SC</strong></td>
<td>12</td>
<td>16</td>
<td>8</td>
<td>12</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>2</td>
<td>7</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>0</td>
<td>3</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td><strong>Lumberton, NC</strong></td>
<td>5</td>
<td>10</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>7</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>7</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>4</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td><strong>Myrtle Beach, SC</strong></td>
<td>13</td>
<td>9</td>
<td>22</td>
<td>8</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>2</td>
<td>2</td>
<td>4</td>
<td>2</td>
<td>2</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>1</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td><strong>North Austin, TX</strong></td>
<td>14</td>
<td>10</td>
<td>10</td>
<td>13</td>
<td>6</td>
<td>6</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>6</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>1</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td><strong>Philadelphia, PA</strong></td>
<td>5</td>
<td>6</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>9</td>
<td>4</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>6</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>0</td>
<td>0</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td><strong>Pittsburgh, PA</strong></td>
<td>11</td>
<td>12</td>
<td>11</td>
<td>17</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>7</td>
<td>4</td>
<td>4</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>6</td>
<td>0</td>
<td>0</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td><strong>Raleigh, NC</strong></td>
<td>4</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>11</td>
<td>7</td>
<td>8</td>
<td>7</td>
<td>11</td>
<td>10</td>
<td>9</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>2</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td><strong>San Antonio, TX</strong></td>
<td>7</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>4</td>
<td>12</td>
<td>7</td>
<td>9</td>
<td>7</td>
<td>7</td>
<td>8</td>
<td>7</td>
<td>0</td>
<td>0</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td><strong>St. Paul, MN</strong></td>
<td>16</td>
<td>13</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>13</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>4</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>2</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>0</td>
<td>0</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td><strong>TOTAL</strong></td>
<td>182</td>
<td>153</td>
<td>177</td>
<td>202</td>
<td>86</td>
<td>76</td>
<td>77</td>
<td>69</td>
<td>94</td>
<td>71</td>
<td>33</td>
<td>27</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

The first grade cases will be newly recruited for the field test. In
September 2005, newspaper advertisements will be placed in the same
eight PSUs from which the kindergarten sample is drawn, asking
interested parents of 6-year-old first graders to call a toll-free
number to enroll in the study. Callers will complete a brief screening
questionnaire to provide the date of birth of the child and to confirm
the child's entrance into first grade and that both the parent and child
speak English. Assuming that the pool of candidates is large enough, we
will select 39 children born in each of the first three quarters of 1999
and 18 born in the fourth quarter. From this total of 135 families, we
expect to complete home visits with 125. Information about the school
will also be collected during screening so that cases representing a
variety of types of schools may be purposely selected into the study
within the four age strata. ***Figure A.2*** (in section A) presents a
graphic depiction of the sample selection.

b.  Estimation Procedures

Two main types of data will be collected during the course of the ECLS-B
K-1 field test: operational data and substantive data. The first type
relates to methodological aspects of the study, such as response rates
and school recruitment procedures. The second type relates to the
content of the instruments, such as performance on the child cognitive
assessment. Analyses of these two data types will inform the national
study design and instrument revisions.

The majority of the analyses will consist of simple statistics,
frequencies, means, proportions, and standard deviations, which are
useful for characterizing response patterns in datasets across the full
sample and subpopulations. In addition, to test differences in item
performance by sample subgroups, a small set of appropriate demographic
variables will be used to cross-tabulate the data from each adult and
child assessment instrument, as shown in ***table B.3.***

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc97360912 .anchor}Table B.3. Domain variables to be
used for analyzing the ECLS-B K-1 field test by instrument/item pool

+----------------+---------------------------+------------------------+
| **Field Test   | **Domain (or "by")        | **Justification for**  |
| Instrument or  | Variables**               |                        |
| Item Pools**   |                           | **Domain Variables**   |
|                | **for Analysis**          |                        |
+----------------+---------------------------+------------------------+
| Abbreviated    | Race/ethnicity            | To provide background  |
| parent         |                           | information for        |
| interview      | Household income level    | analysis of child      |
| (CAPI)         |                           | cognitive assessments  |
|                | Mother's education        |                        |
|                |                           |                        |
|                | Mother's age at child's   |                        |
|                | birth                     |                        |
+----------------+---------------------------+------------------------+
| Child          | Child's race/ethnicity    | To detect differences  |
| cognitive      |                           | in item performance    |
| assessments    | Child's sex               | for girls versus boys, |
|                |                           | for majority versus    |
|                | Child's age               | minority racial/ethnic |
|                |                           | groups, and for        |
|                | Mother's education        | younger versus older   |
|                |                           | children               |
|                | Home language             |                        |
|                |                           |                        |
|                | Birth weight              |                        |
|                |                           |                        |
|                | School Type               |                        |
|                |                           |                        |
|                | Grade Level               |                        |
+----------------+---------------------------+------------------------+
| Teacher SAQ    | Public/private school     | To detect any problems |
|                |                           | with item performance  |
|                | Grade level               | among school types and |
|                |                           | grade level            |
|                | Urbanicity                |                        |
|                |                           |                        |
|                | Size                      |                        |
+----------------+---------------------------+------------------------+

##  Abbreviated Parent Interview. **The main purposes of the abbreviated parent interview are to provide the information needed (1) to conduct the child assessment psychometric analyses and (2) to execute the school-based portion of the study. The abbreviated parent interview will not be part of the national study, so the data will not be analyzed in the same manner as will the other field test instruments. Rather, the focus will be on obtaining demographic information to be used as part of the analysis of the child data and school information and consents. Because the items are a subset of the items in the full parent interview and have been used many times before, they should not present any difficulties for respondents.** 

**Child Assessments.** The language/literacy and mathematics field test
responses will be analyzed and summarized for the field test report.
Statistical tables will be prepared that will present the psychometric
characteristics of each test item for the field test sample. Analysis of
the cognitive field test data will include standard item analysis,
factor analysis, and IRT calibration. Because Differential Item
Functioning (DIF) data are available from the ECLS-B preschool and the
ECLS-K K-1 data collection, DIF analysis will not be performed using K-1
field test results. The results of these analyses, together with reports
on the experiences of the field assessors, will guide the design of the
assessment forms for the national assessment. These steps are described
below.

-   Item Analysis: Tables of item performance will be produced showing
    the number and percent of children choosing each response option,
    overall performance (i.e., on the whole set of items) for children
    choosing each option, item difficulty, and relationship of items to
    the overall scale. Since the field test items will come from
    previous operational test forms (ECLS-B preschool and/or ECLS-K K-1)
    revisions to question wording, instructions, and response options
    are not anticipated. Item analysis statistics will be reviewed
    primarily to identify any flaws that may not have been detected
    previously or that may result from changes in the context of the
    tests or differences in the experiences of the children taking them.

-   Factor Analysis/IRT: Factor analysis of item responses within each
    domain will be carried out to determine whether the tests are
    sufficiently unidimensional to support IRT analysis. If so, IRT
    parameters will be estimated for each of the field test items. IRT
    analysis describes item performance with parameters that are in some
    respects analogous to the statistics obtained from classical item
    analysis and offer additional perspective on performance of items
    within both broad and narrow ranges of ability. Distributions of
    ability parameters for the field-tested kindergarten and first grade
    children will provide the basis for selecting the distributions of
    items most suitable for each test form.

-   Linkage Issues: In order to be able to statistically link the ECLS-B
    and ECLS-K samples, it will be necessary to connect the statistics
    from the national preschool test with the statistics from the ECLS-K
    battery. For children who are the same age as those in the ECLS-K
    sample, it is expected that the percent correct on ECLS-K items will
    be comparable to the ECLS-K fall kindergarten and ECLS-K fall first
    grade national statistics. Statistics can be adjusted to account for
    differences between the percent correct found in the K-1 field test
    and in the ECLS-K national data. The range of abilities that is
    expected to occur will be examined to gauge whether the item
    difficulties are appropriate for the ECLS-B K-1 national sample.
    Thus, the key task will be to ensure items are at the correct
    difficulty level for the national test, especially at the lower end.
    If the difficulty level is appropriate for the children in the field
    test without floor and ceiling effects, then the field test can be
    linked to the other forms and to the national administrations.

**Evaluation of the School Recruitment Process.** In addition to
analyzing the instruments themselves, the data related to the procedures
for gaining entry into schools will be analyzed. The following issues
will be examined after field-testing the school recruitment process:

-   When comparing the pre-recruited kindergartens to those contacted
    for the first time in the fall, does a spring advance recruitment
    process increase the fall cooperation rate?

-   When comparing the pre-recruited kindergartens to those contacted
    for the first time in the fall, does a spring advance recruitment
    process increase the speed with which cooperation is gained in the
    fall?

-   Do the school administrators have suggestions for making this
    contacting process more effective and/or efficient?

-   What are the key concerns raised or questions asked so that training
    materials for the Institutional Contacts (ICs) will reflect these
    concerns and prepare the ICs to successfully respond to them?

-   Do informational packets sent via first class mail receive adequate
    attention in terms of response and time to respond?

-   Will gaining school cooperation for first grade teachers to
    participate be more or less difficult than gaining school
    cooperation for kindergarten teachers?

-   Does the inclusion of professional association endorsements have a
    positive effect on cooperation and response rates?

-   Will changes to our informational packet be recommended, and should
    such recommendations be followed?

All this information will be used to plan the most efficient and
effective way to garner school cooperation and access to teachers for
the national study.

##  Teacher Self-Administered Questionnaire. **For the teacher SAQ, both operational and substantive data will be analyzed. First, response rates will be calculated, along with the level of effort that was required at each stage of recruitment and follow-up. The teacher SAQ will yield substantive data on the child's classroom learning environment, the child's academic skills, and teacher characteristics. Many of the items have been taken from the teacher SAQ used in the ECLS-K or other large-scale studies. We do not expect many issues to arise concerning respondents' ability to understand the items, but because we are concerned about teachers' ability to respond to these items early in the school year, we will further evaluate the teacher SAQ data in two main steps.** 

First, the match between the field test sample and the ECLS-K cohort on
key demographics will be examined to ensure that the ECLS-K cohort is a
reasonable population against which to compare our results. Second, the
response distributions will be compared between the ECLS-B and the
ECLS-K cohorts, including analyses of measures of central tendency (mean
and mode) and the relative frequency distribution across response
categories. Special attention will be paid to frequencies and
distributions for "don't know" or missing responses as an indication
that an item may be difficult to answer earlier in the school year. The
data will also be examined for floor and ceiling effects that might
indicate an item is not age-appropriate. Third, the percentage of
teachers who report that it was difficult to answer questions on the SAQ
in the fall will be calculated. If it appears that a significant number
of items present difficulties for teachers or if there is insufficient
response variability, redesign of the SAQ, including the time of year at
which it is administered, will be considered.

The results of our efforts to gain cooperation from schools are
described on page 35. Although sample size and nonrandom assignment
preclude rigorous statistical testing of observed differences as a
function of this small experiment, quantitative and qualitative results
will guide project planning.

##  Data on School Characteristics. **The school characteristics data will be analyzed to determine if existing databases such as the CCD and PSS can fulfill our needs for the purpose of the ECLS-B K-1 national study. A cursory review of these databases has already revealed that two items of interest (school year start and end dates and average daily attendance) are not available. For the data we are able to retrieve, we will determine how many schools in our field test sample could not be found in the CCD, PSS, or other existing databases. We will note operational issues as well, such as whether we have asked parents for all the information we need in order to efficiently identify the schools within the databases.**

c\. Degree of Accuracy Needed

A sample of 300 completed child assessments (along with the data from
the preschool and ECLS-K assessments) will be sufficient to estimate the
item parameters for the child cognitive assessment. Fewer than 300 cases
would make it difficult to utilize IRT parameters. These parameters are
useful because IRT compensates for all sorts of things that classical
item analysis does not: the possibility of guessing (i.e., different
percent correct depending on whether multiple choice or open-ended
format is used), omits, and discontinue rules.  Also, IRT plots show the
fit of the model to the data *at each point along the ability
continuum.* IRT plots help to pinpoint the range of ability for which an
item provides useful information.  To be able to see this, enough
observations at each of 30 or 40 different points along the range are
necessary to show patterns of performance.  The expected completes for
the teacher and school procedures will also be sufficient for testing
the procedures.

 

d\. Circumstances Requiring Specialized Sampling Procedures

One of the main goals of this field test is to test procedures for both
kindergartners and first graders. In order to meet this goal, it is
necessary to recruit some older kindergarten age children and some
children who are in first grade.

# 3. Methods Used to Maximize Response Rates {#methods-used-to-maximize-response-rates .ahd12-1}

The obstacles to participation vary across the components of the ECLS-B
study, so the solutions must vary as well. We discuss our strategies for
the different components below.

**Home Visit.** Response rates for the preschool home visit were very
good (84.4% unweighted), especially since the sample had not been seen
in 2-½ years and no locator data were available until the end of the
field test. (The response rate is the number of completed parent
interviews divided by the total eligible sample.) The vast majority of
the nonresponding cases were unlocatable (69.2%), with additional
nonresponse resulting from families refusing (24.8%) and from other
reasons (31.2%). Because locating information was collected from those
seen during the preschool field test and they will have just been seen
the prior fall, it is anticipated that there will be a high response
rate for the kindergarten field test sample. The first grade sample will
be newly recruited, so it is expected that the targeted number of cases
will be completed.

Refusals should be less of an issue in the field test since more than
half of the sample participants would have been contacted during the
preschool field test. Strategies for refusal conversion include having
the field supervisor call the sample member, mailing a refusal
conversion letter, and, in limited instances, allowing the interviewer
to make special arrangements with the family. Interviewers will be
encouraged to think of other inexpensive methods for addressing the
specific obstacle encountered with a family and to discuss these ideas
with their supervisors. Since all refusal conversion strategies are
reviewed and approved by the field supervisors, they will be responsible
for recording in a spreadsheet the ID number, strategies implemented,
and outcomes of each refusal case. Although it can be difficult to tease
out the effect of individual activities in instances in which multiple
strategies are employed, the spreadsheet will provide some quantitative
data on relative success rates.

While refusals to follow-up rounds are usually low, a potentially
greater source of nonresponse may be sample members whom the
interviewers cannot locate; this was the case during the preschool field
test. However, with only a year between the two field tests, it is not
expected that this will be a serious problem. Aside from the newly
recruited participants, everyone else will have been seen during the
preschool field test; nevertheless, steps will be taken to minimize
nonresponse. Those members of the field test sample selected for the
kindergarten field test will be sent a letter in the spring that will
ask about the child's kindergarten plans. This mailing will also provide
information regarding those who moved. The mailing will also be used to
update the locator records through a variety of techniques. Before the
mailouts, all cases will be checked against the National Change of
Address (NCOA) database to obtain any address updates filed with the
U.S. Postal Service. Included in the mailing will be a postage-paid
address/telephone number update card that sample members may fill out
and return if they have moved or if they move between the time of the
mailing and the beginning of data collection. A toll-free telephone
number will also be included for the participants to call with any
questions or with locator information updates. Finally, all returned
mail will be monitored (e.g., bad address, no such address,
undeliverable), capturing the information in the control system for
later follow-up.

RTI's Call Center Services (CCS) unit is available for intensive tracing
of unlocatable cases. RTI tracers have access to multiple credit bureau
databases, consumer and census-oriented databases, state Division of
Motor Vehicle records, and computerized residential telephone and
address look-up services. In addition to database searches, tracers will
also conduct telephone tracing, calling contact persons named by the
respondent and neighbors or relatives of the family identified through
database searches. The supervisor of RTI's Call Center will develop a
study-specific protocol for tracers to follow after studying and working
several cases and familiarizing him or herself with the typical
preloaded information found for an ECLS-B Preschool year case.
Generally, earlier steps such as confirming area codes for preloaded
telephone numbers and conducting searches using the least expensive
databases will entail fewer costs. Later steps will involve more
expensive searches that should be used only for the hardest to locate
cases. All steps conducted by the tracers, and their outcomes will be
documented in the Call Center's Case Management System (CMS). A detailed
report of these steps will be sent to the field interviewer who receives
the case after it is worked by the Call Center.

Field interviewers will, of course, identify additional cases in which
the telephone numbers and addresses provided are no longer accurate. In
these instances, interviewers will perform some simple field locating
activities if the last known address is within 10 miles of the
interviewer's home or is near other sample cases. These activities
include talking to current residents of the last known address and to
former neighbors of the family. If no leads are developed from these
efforts, or if the case is more than 10 miles from the interviewer's
home and not near other sample members' homes, the case will be
transferred to RTI's Call Center for centralized tracing. The decision
to send a case to the Call Center, and at what point, will be made by
the field supervisor on a case-by-case basis. If the Call Center is
unsuccessful in locating the family, the case will be returned to the
field for more extensive field locating. During the field test, we will
carefully monitor the success of our tracing strategy, adapt it as
necessary, and refine a protocol for the national sample.

**Teacher Self-Administered Questionnaire (SAQ).** One of the major
goals of the field test is to test methods of maximizing response rates
for the teacher data. First, field interviewers will present clear
reasons to the parents explaining why it is important to obtain their
permission to contact teachers. Parents will be encouraged to call the
toll-free number if they have questions about that part of the study.
Second, several procedures will be used to recruit schools prior to the
actual data collection period. Information obtained during the preschool
field test will be used, and the panel maintenance mailing in spring
2005 will also provide updated information regarding the child's
potential school. In addition, a variety of procedures will be used to
notify and secure the approval of state, district, and school-level
administrators, including mailing an advance recruitment letter to
district personnel and principals as well as to the Chief State School
Officers of the eight states where the sample is located and following
these letters up with phone calls from institutional contactors.
Endorsement from professional education organizations were solicited and
have been received from 10 organizations including the National
Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the National
Association of Elementary School Principals, and the Council of Chief
State School Officers. These organizations' names will appear on the
letters to district administrators and school principals in the fall to
support cooperation rates. Differences observed among cases using
different recruitment methods will be compared and used to guide
planning and recruitment practices for the national study. For example,
the number of schools/districts requiring some type of approval process,
the level of school administration at which this occurs, and the extent
to which this delays teacher data collection will assist planning. Time
required to reach various stages of the school study will be compared.
Although sample size and nonrandom assignment preclude rigorous
statistical testing of observed differences, quantitative and
qualitative results will guide project planning.

The actual Teacher SAQ will be sent in the fall after the home visit so
that the signed consent to contact the teacher will be included in the
packet. The SAQ will be mailed along with the signed consent, NCES
letter endorsing the study, a study brochure, a postage-paid business
reply envelope, and a \$10 gift certificate. Four days after the
questionnaire packet is mailed, a thank you/reminder postcard will be
sent to the teacher's school address, and 2 weeks after the mailing of
the questionnaire packet, a second questionnaire packet will be sent to
those teachers who have not yet returned the completed questionnaire.
Two weeks after that, if the questionnaire is not returned, a reminder
phone call will be placed to the teacher.

# 4. Pilot Tests {#pilot-tests .ahd12-1}

Prior to the field test, a small pilot will be carried out for many of
the instruments to make any last-minute adjustments in procedures and
item comprehension. This will occur after we have received approval from
the IRB.

The full parent interview and the Early Care and Education
Provider (ECEP) interview will be evaluated on a smaller scale during
fall 2005, using cognitive interviews. Nine respondents will be
recruited for participation in cognitive testing of the parent
interview, with a goal of having five parents of kindergartners and four
parents of first graders. We will recruit parents whose children attend
schools with a variety of characteristics, such as public versus
private. We will also attempt to recruit some parents of children in
some type of regular after-school care arrangement. For testing of the
ECEP, we will recruit six participants, aiming for three providers of
home-based care and three providers of center-based care. Both groups of
volunteers will be from the Raleigh, NC, area and will be paid \$30 for
their participation. Our cognitive testing will focus on items that have
changed significantly since the preschool field test, as well as on
items new to the questionnaires. We will time the instruments and ask
participants to comment on their comprehension of certain sets of items.

We will perform a small pilot test of the child cognitive assessment to
be sure that the length of the assessment is appropriate, item
directions are clear, stop rules work as they should, and other
procedures work appropriately. Two kindergarten and two first grade
children will be recruited from the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area,
using an advertisement in RTI's staff newspaper (both print and
electronic). Children will receive a \$10 gift card. This pilot testing
will occur in summer 2005 in sufficient time so that changes to the
instrument can be made prior to the training that will occur in fall
2005.

# 5. Personnel Involved in ECLS-B K-1 Sample Design and Data Collection  {#personnel-involved-in-ecls-b-k-1-sample-design-and-data-collection .ahd12-1}

***Table B-4*** lists the personnel involved in the ECLS-B K-1 sample
design and data collection who may be contacted for additional
information.

+------------------------+--------------------------+------------------+
| []{#__Re               |                          |                  |
| fHeading___Toc97360913 |                          |                  |
| .anchor}Table B-4.     |                          |                  |
| Personnel involved in  |                          |                  |
| ECLS-B K-1 field test  |                          |                  |
| sample design and data |                          |                  |
| collection             |                          |                  |
+------------------------+--------------------------+------------------+
| Name                   | Title                    | Telephone        |
+------------------------+--------------------------+------------------+
| Ina F. Ph.D.           | Principal Investigator,  | > 919-541-6967   |
|                        | RTI                      |                  |
+------------------------+--------------------------+------------------+
| Alice Turner, B.S.     | Project Director, RTI    | > 919-541-6479   |
+------------------------+--------------------------+------------------+
| Jean Lennon, Ph.D.     | Associate Project        | > 919-541-6967   |
|                        | Director, RTI            |                  |
+------------------------+--------------------------+------------------+
| Sara Wheeless, Ph.D.   | Senior Statistician, RTI | > 919-541-5891   |
+------------------------+--------------------------+------------------+
| Donald Rock, Ph.D.     | Educational Testing      | > 609-734-5655   |
|                        | Service                  |                  |
+------------------------+--------------------------+------------------+
| Judy Pollock, M.S.     | Educational Testing      | > 609-734-1507   |
|                        | Service                  |                  |
+------------------------+--------------------------+------------------+
| Jerry West, Ph.D.      | Project Officer, NCES    | > 202-502-7335   |
+------------------------+--------------------------+------------------+
| Jennifer Park, Ph.D.   | Statistician, NCES       | > 202-219-7002   |
+------------------------+--------------------------+------------------+

#   {#section-1 .ahd12-1}

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