2015-16

NATIONAL TEACHER AND PRINCIPAL SURVEY (NTPS)

FULL-SCALE DATA COLLECTION

OMB SUPPORTING STATEMENT

PART A

OMB# 1850-0598 v.11

February 2015

Rev. April 27, 2015

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
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A. JUSTIFICATION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Circumstances Making Collection of Information Necessary.................................................................................................... 2

2. Purposes and Uses of NTPS....................................................................................................................................................... 4

3. Appropriate Use of Information Technology ............................................................................................................................. 4

4. Efforts to Identify Duplication ................................................................................................................................................... 4

5. Methods Used to Minimize Burden on Small Entities............................................................................................................... 5

6. Frequency of Data Collection..................................................................................................................................................... 5

7. Special Circumstances of Data Collection ................................................................................................................................. 5

8. Consultants outside the Agency ................................................................................................................................................. 5

9. Provision of payments or Gifts to Respondents......................................................................................................................... 6

10. Assurance of Confidentiality.................................................................................................................................................... 6

11. Sensitive Questions.................................................................................................................................................................. 7

12. Estimates of Hour Burden for Information Collection............................................................................................................. 7

13. Estimates of Cost Burden......................................................................................................................................................... 8

14. Costs to the Federal Government ............................................................................................................................................. 8

15. Reasons for Changes in Response Burden and Costs............................................................................................................... 8

16. Time Schedule for NTPS ......................................................................................................................................................... 9

17. Approval to not Display Expiration Date for OMB Approval ................................................................................................. 9

18. Exception to the Certification Statement.................................................................................................................................. 9

Attachment A - Questionnaires

Attachment B - Respondent Contact Materials

Attachment C - NTPS Content for the First Two Cycles (2015-16 and 2017-18) and Changes from 2011-12 SASS Content 
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A. JUSTIFICATION

1. Circumstances Making Collection of Information Necessary

This request is to conduct data collection for the 2015-16 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS). 

The NTPS preliminary activities, including contacting school districts and sending pre-contact letters to 

schools selected for NTPS 2015-2016, were approved in January 2015 (OMB# 1850-0598 v.10). NTPS is 

conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), of the Institute of Education Sciences 

(IES), within the U.S. Department of Education (ED). It is a redesign of the Schools and Staffing Survey

(SASS), which has been conducted seven times previously in 1987-88, 1990-91, 1993-94, 1999-2000, 

2003-2004, 2007-08, and 2011-12. The redesign is aimed at developing a study that is:

 highly flexible – utilizing rotating modules with core surveys of teachers and principals to provide 

ED and researchers with trend data on key topics, and the ability to quickly collect information on 

pressing topics;

 timely – administering and providing new data every two years instead of every 4 years, and 

designed from the ground up to allow for quick turnaround of datasets and reports with release of 

data within 12 months of end of data collection; and

 integrated with other ED data – either linked with other collections such as EDFacts and CRDC, or 

maintaining variables that allow researchers to make these links.

NTPS has been designed to meet these objectives while also maintaining SASS’s longstanding role as the 

primary source of data on teacher and principal labor markets, and on the state of K-12 school staffing. By

utilizing core content that is included in each round, along with rotating modules that allow deeper 

investigation of key topics, NTPS will cover a similar breadth of topics as did SASS but in more depth 

across two study administrations. Some of the key design changes from the 2011-12 SASS include:

 Nationally- instead of state-representative estimates;

 Data collection every two instead of every four years;

 Removed district and library questionnaires to reduce burden; and

 Exploration of the use of extant data to replace subsets of items in the remaining forms.

Due to the low response rates achieved in the 2011-12 Private School SASS and the 2013-14 Private 

School Survey (PSS), NCES will not collect private school data in the 2015-16 NTPS, but instead will

utilize the 2015-16 PSS to test approaches to enhance response rates among private schools. Attachment 

C shows NTPS content for its first two cycles (2015-16 and 2017-18) and changes from 2011-12 SASS.

Justification for the 2015-16 NTPS

The 2014-2015 NTPS Pilot Test and other design and development activities have led to changes in 

NTPS procedures, sampling design, and content as compared to previous SASS studies. The basic 

components and key design features of this full-scale NTPS respond to the need for comparative data on 

teachers, school administrators, and school policies and programs to fulfill the ongoing requirement for 

NCES to meet its legislative mandate to report on the “condition of education in the United States.” NTPS 

is the Department of Education’s primary source of information about the composition of the school 

workforce and policies affecting the recruitment, retention, and retirement of teachers and principals. It is 

unique among education studies in that it allows linkage between school, principal, and teacher responses.

NTPS will replace SASS as one of the key sources of nationally representative data on a range of 
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important education topics including out of field teaching, school decision making, professional 

development, teacher and principal evaluation, and career paths of educators and administrators. The 

cross-sectional repeated design of NTPS allows tracking of trends on these topics over time.

Legislative Authorization

NCES is authorized to conduct this study under the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA; 20

U.S. Code §9543).

Prior and Related Studies

The studies prior to the Schools and Staffing Survey were separate surveys of public and private schools, 

principals, teachers, and school districts under the Elementary and Secondary General Information 

System. The National Research Council report, “Creating a Center for Education Statistics: A Time for 

Action,” in 1986, noted:

“It is essential that any system of collecting education data recognize, reflect and react to the issue of timeliness (...) An 

example of such a lack is the case of teaching and teachers. With the publication of A Nation at Risk (National 

Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983), these topics emerged as fundamental issues of concern, and the need for 

data was sudden and immediate. Unfortunately, information on the number of teachers and other professional staff – which 

we would think would be an essential element of any continuing data system – was last collected at the elementary and

secondary level in 1979-80. Data on minority teachers is even more archaic, having last been collected in 1968.”

This report caused a number of fundamental changes at NCES (formerly, the Center for Education 

Statistics). Among them was the establishment of the Schools and Staffing Survey, to collect data on a 

periodic basis about schools, principals, teachers, districts, and school libraries, all in the same survey 

year. The survey was designed to provide the data at the state level for public schools and at the 

“affiliation” level for private schools.

The General Education Provisions Act, as amended [20 U.S.C. §1211(e)(1)], specified that the National 

Center for Education Statistics (NCES) design an integrated survey system called the Schools and 

Staffing Survey (SASS). Legislative authority for NCES to collect data through surveys was reauthorized 

under the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994, and has most recently been authorized by the 

provisions of the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 cited above. SASS was first fielded in school 

year 1987-88, collected every 3 years through 1993-94, and then underwent a 6-year pause for major 

survey design revisions, which resulted in the 1999-2000 data collection. Since then, SASS has been on a 

4-year data collection cycle, with each SASS data collection followed one year later by the Teacher 

Follow-up Survey (TFS) & Principal Follow-up Survey (PFS) data collections. The most recent 

administration was in 2011-12. At the conclusion of the 2011-12 collection, NCES began to redesign 

SASS and named it the National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) to reflect the redesigned study’s

narrowed focus on the teacher and principal labor market and on the state of K-12 school staff. The TFS 

and PFS will remain part of the NTPS and will be collected every four years beginning in 2016-17. These 

two follow up surveys will go back to NTPS Teacher and Principal Survey respondents to determine 

whether they are still working at the same school or in the field of education. These data will be analyzed 

in the context of their responses to the prior year NTPS. The TFS and PFS allow researchers to look at 

dynamics of the teacher and principal labor market, as well as attrition. Since it follows NTPS 

respondents, the current status of teachers and principals can be looked at in the context of the working 

conditions, sense of autonomy, and other self-reported variables from the prior year.
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2. Purposes and Uses of NTPS

In the past, some of the most published analyses based on SASS have included average class size, the 

number of new teachers, out-of-field teaching, professional development, teacher attrition and retention, 

and teacher qualifications. NCES plans to keep items on these topics in NTPS. Based on previous 

administrations of SASS, the NTPS data will be used to develop nationally representative statistics on:

 teacher qualifications, teacher career paths, professional development needs and activities, and 

support for these aspects of teachers' careers by the school and the district;

 school organization and decision-making, management of curriculum and instruction, school safety, 

and parental involvement; and

 policies pertaining to the recruitment and retention of teachers and principals.

3. Appropriate Use of Information Technology

As in the 2014-15 NTPS Pilot Test and all prior administrations of SASS, the Census Bureau will collect 

data under an interagency agreement with NCES. Technology will be applied appropriately to keep 

respondent burden to a minimum.

To lessen the response burden on public schools, speed up the teacher sample selection, and reduce data 

processing costs, schools will be asked to send a list of all of their teachers via electronic files, with the 

alternative option of filling out a paper questionnaire. Schools will be assured that all teacher data will be 

stored on secure online servers controlled by the U.S. Census Bureau. Additionally, questionnaires within 

each sampled school will be tracked using an electronic tool which the Census Bureau has used in the 

2014-15 NTPS Pilot Test, economic surveys, and other types of establishment surveys. Voluntary schoolbased coordinators will be invited to access this web-based tool at the outset of data collection activities.

In addition, following successful implementation in the NTPS pilot test, schools will be asked to provide 

teacher email addresses on the Teacher Listing form. Teachers with email addresses will be invited to 

respond to the Teacher Questionnaire through an Internet response option. If they do not respond, they

will also be given the option to respond by paper. Independently, as part of the questionnaire, we will ask 

all teachers and principal for their email addresses to be used in the subsequent 2016-17 Teacher Followup Survey (TFS) and the Principal Follow-up Survey (PFS), respectively.

Lastly, a small test using non-production cases will be implemented to determine whether school staff and 

principals are more likely to respond to an Internet response option than the traditional paper 

questionnaires with the use of a coordinator. The Internet response option reduces processing costs and 

editing errors. A similar test was conducted as part of the 2014-15 NTPS Pilot Test, but that design did 

not include the use of a coordinator.

4. Efforts to Identify Duplication

A key element of the NTPS design principle was to leverage trusted data sources instead of asking 

schools or districts to report items on NTPS that they or their state have already provided through other 

collections. At the start of the SASS redesign, all SASS items were cross-walked against a variety of ED’s

and external data sources. From this review, a number of duplicate or near duplicate items were identified.

As a result, NCES plans to append to the NTPS files data from the Common Core of Data (CCD) and 

Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) in order to enrich and not duplicate data collection on these topics.

In some cases a duplicate item was kept on NTPS because the extant variable was not suitable for NTPS
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(e.g. due to an issue with periodicity, availability, item wording, reliability, or the item being needed for 

confirmation purposes).

5. Methods Used to Minimize Burden on Small Entities

The burden on small schools is minimized during the NTPS through the sample design that specifies the 

selection of schools as a function of size defined by the number of teachers. Small schools, therefore, will 

be sampled at lower rates than larger schools because they comprise a smaller proportion of the teacher 

population per school. Additionally, a large component of this redesign is specifically to improve the data 

collected and minimize the burden imposed on respondents. The proposed NTPS questionnaires are 

shorter than the respective SASS questionnaires.

6. Frequency of Data Collection

NCES plans for the NTPS to be collected on a two year cycle.

7. Special Circumstances of Data Collection

There are no circumstances that will require special data collection efforts.

8. Consultants outside the Agency

Since its inception, the development of SASS has relied on the substantive and technical review and 

comment of people both inside and outside the Department of Education. Outside experts who were 

convened to offer comments on proposed revisions for the NTPS and their affiliation at the start of the 

project include:

Dale Ballou

Vanderbilt University

Nashville, TN

Mark Berends

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame, IN

Rolf Blank

Council of Chief State School Officers

Washington, D.C.

Sean Corcoran

New York University

New York, NY

Betheny Gross

Center on Reinventing Public Education

University of Washington

Seattle, WA

Richard Ingersoll

University of Pennsylvania

Graduate School of Education

Philadelphia, PA

Joe McTighe

Council for American Private Education

Germantown, MD

Anna Nicotera

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools

Washington, DC

Gary Sykes

Understanding Teaching Quality Research Center

Education Testing Services

Princeton, NJ

The following experts served as part of the SASS team in previous rounds of administration:

Mr. Aref Dajani

Chief, Longitudinal Surveys Branch

Demographic Statistical Methods Division

U.S. Census Bureau

Washington, DC 20233

Mr. Howard McGowan

Assistant Division Chief

Demographic Surveys Division

U.S. Census Bureau

Washington, DC 20233

Ms. Jill Dever

Senior Research Statistician,

RTI International

Statistics and Epidemiology Unit (RTI-DC)

701 13th Street N.W. Suite 750

Washington, D.C. 20005-3967

The current NTPS design has benefited from consultation with the following federal experts:
Mr. Stephen Broughman

Statistician, Cross-Sectional Surveys Branch

Sample Surveys Division, NCES

1990 K Street, NW

Washington, DC 20006

Ms. Kathryn Chandler

Statistician, Cross-Sectional Surveys Branch

Sample Surveys Division, NCES

1990 K Street, NW

Washington, DC 20006

Dr. Cleo Redline

Senior Research Scientist,

Statistical Standards and Data Confidentiality, NCES

1990 K Street, NW

Washington, DC 20006

Ms. Carolyn Pickering

Survey Director, Education Surveys Team

U.S. Census Bureau

Washington, DC 20233

Ms. Shawna Cox

Assistant Survey Director, Education Surveys Team

U.S. Census Bureau

Washington, DC 20233

Ms. Teresa Thomas

Survey Statistician

U.S. Census Bureau

Washington, DC 20233

9. Provision of payments or Gifts to Respondents

NCES will not provide a cash incentive to survey respondents. Some Districts charge a fee to process 

research application requests, which we will pay as necessary.

10. Assurance of Confidentiality

The NTPS data collection agent, the Census Bureau, shall comply with ED’s IT security requirements as 

set forth in the Handbook for Information Assurance Security Policy; with related procedures and 

guidance, including the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), Office of Management 

and Budget (OMB) Circulars, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standards 

and guidance; and with the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA 2002; 20 U.S.C., § 9573).

These requirements include the successful certification and accreditation of the system before it can be 

implemented. Appropriate memoranda of understanding and interconnection security agreements will be 

documented as part of the certification and accreditation process.

From the initial contact with the participants in this survey through all of the follow-up efforts, potential 

survey respondents will be informed that all of the information they provide may only be used for 

statistical purposes and may not be disclosed, or used, in identifiable form for any other purpose except as 

required by law [Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA 2002; 20 U.S.C., § 9573). The 

following language will be included on all survey instruments (on the log-in page for online versions):

Your responses are protected from disclosure by federal statute (20 U.S.C., §9573). All responses that relate to 

or describe identifiable characteristics of individuals may be used only for statistical purposes and may not be 

disclosed, or used, in identifiable form for any other purpose, unless otherwise compelled by law.

According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, no persons are required to respond to a collection of 

information unless it displays a valid OMB control number. The valid OMB control number for this voluntary 

information collection is 1850-0598. The time required to complete this information collection is estimated to 

average XX minutes per response, including the time to review instructions, search existing data resources, 

gather the data needed, and complete and review the information collection. If you have any comments 

concerning the accuracy of the time estimate, suggestions for improving this collection, or comments or 

concerns about the contents or the status of your individual submission of this questionnaire, please e-mail: 

addp.education.surveys@census.gov, or write directly to: National Teacher and Principal Survey, National 

Center for Education Statistics, 1990 K Street, N.W., #9046, Washington, DC 20006.
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11. Sensitive Questions

The teacher and principal questionnaires collect data on salary, crime victimization (teacher only), and 

perceptions of influence in the school. While these items might be considered sensitive, they have been 

used in the past and response rates for these items are traditionally high, ranging from 94.2% to 99.8% for 

principals and 92.3% to 98.2% for teachers.

12. Estimates of Hour Burden for Information Collection

The sample size, projected number of responses, estimated average response time, and the total estimated 

respondent burden for the 2015-16 NTPS data collection activities are provided in Table 12a-c.

Table 12.a. Estimates of respondent burden for the 2015-16 NTPS data collection activities

Activity/Respondent 

Type Sample

Expected 

response rate

Number of 

respondents

Number of 

responses

Per respondent 

(minutes)

Total burden 

(hours)

SCHOOL STAFF

Teacher listing form 8,300 0.64 5,312 5,312 30 2,656

School questionnaire 8,300 0.64 5,312 5,312 30 2,656

PRINCIPALS

Screener interview 8,300 0.64 5,312 5,312 5 443

Principal questionnaire 8,300 0.64 5,312 5,312 22 1,948

TEACHERS

Teacher Questionnaire 40,000 0.6625 26,500 26,500 40 17,667

Total 42,436 47,748 25,370

The 2015-2016 NTPS data collection begins with an initial mailout package addressed to the principal of

each sampled school that includes a letter to the principal, a letter to the school coordinator (which 

includes instructions for completing a brief online screener interview using the NTPS Respondent Status 

Center), the Teacher Listing Form, the School Questionnaire, and the Principal Questionnaire. The 

questionnaires are considered to be "completed" when they are returned to the Census Bureau. The 

principal is expected to spend the time to read the advance letter and make a determination about the 

school’s participation in NTPS (involving the teacher listing form and the two questionnaires). The 

principal is asked to complete the Principal Questionnaire, and anyone in the school knowledgeable about 

the topics in the Teacher Listing Form or the School Questionnaire may complete those forms.

Schools will be provided instructions for tracking the status of their school’s questionnaires through the 

NTPS Respondent Status Center, with most schools expected to designate this task to a person other than

the principal. The person designated for this task is referred to as the School Coordinator. Schools that do 

not respond to the initial survey request will receive up to three additional requests by mail. Schools that 

do not respond to these mailings will be contacted by phone or personal visit. These contacts will focus on 

the completion of the Teacher Listing Form that is needed to draw a sample for the Teacher 

Questionnaire. During the call, the school contact person will also be encouraged to complete the NTPS 

School Questionnaire and Principal Questionnaire, as appropriate. Once the teacher listing forms are 

received, processed, and the sample is selected, invitations to complete the teacher questionnaires will be

sent out to teachers on a flow basis by either email and/or paper. Teachers for whom email addresses have 

been obtained will be invited to complete the Teacher Questionnaire by Internet response. When a

teacher’s email address is not provided, attempts will be made to locate it through internet searches of 

school and district websites and through commercial vendor lists. When no address can be obtained, the 
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teacher will be mailed a paper questionnaire. Teachers with email addresses who do not provide an 

Internet response will be invited to complete the paper questionnaire.

In addition to the full-scale data collection, an NTPS Schools and Principals Internet Test will be 

conducted using a supplemental sample. These cases will not be used in the 2015-16 NTPS estimates.

Table 12.b. Estimates of respondent burden for the NTPS Schools and Principals Internet Test

Activity/Respondent 

Type Sample

Expected 

response rate

Number of 

respondents

Number of 

responses

Per respondent 

(minutes)

Total burden 

(hours)

SCHOOL STAFF

Teacher listing form 1,000 0.64 640 640 30 320

School questionnaire 1,000 0.64 640 640 30 320

PRINCIPALS

Screener Interview 1,000 0.50 500 500 5 42

Principal questionnaire 1,000 0.50 500 500 22 183

Total 1,780 2,280 865

This test will follow the same data collection procedures and timeline as the full-scale data collection with 

the following exceptions: mailout packages will not include paper questionnaires with the exception of the 

third mailout where the schools will be re-invited to participate via a paper questionnaire included in that 

mailing; there will be two not three follow-up mailings; and no teachers will be sampled from the Teacher 

Listing Forms collected during this test.

Table 12.c. Total Burden Hours for NTPS

Activity/Respondent Type

Number of 

respondents

Number of 

responses

Total burden 

(hours)

2015-16 NTPS data collection 42,436 47,748 25,370

NTPS School and Principal Internet Test 1,780 2,280 865

Total Response Burden 44,216 50,028 26,235

The standard procedure for estimating burden time response cost is to multiply the estimated average 

length of time it takes to complete the survey by the average salary. The average hourly earnings of local 

government employees who are primary, secondary, or special education teachers in the 2014 National 

Compensation Survey sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is $40.941, and of an education 

administrator it is $42.682. Therefore, the total estimated burden time response cost for teacher 

respondents is $723,287, and for school administrators $365,682.

13. Estimates of Cost Burden

There are no additional costs to respond beyond the time to respond.

14. Costs to the Federal Government

The cost to the federal government for the 2015-16 NTPS is $8.6 million. The Census Bureau estimates 

were developed by the Census Bureau divisions involved in these activities.

1

See http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.t04.htm.

2

Source: BLS Occupational Employment Statistics, http://data.bls.gov/oes/ datatype: SOC:119030 (Education Administrators); 

accessed on January 30, 2015.
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15. Reasons for Changes in Response Burden and Costs

This request shows an increase in the estimated response burden because the last approval was for 2015-

2016 NTPS preliminary activities while this request is for the data collections.

16. Time Schedule for NTPS

The operational schedule for 2015-16 NTPS is as follows:

Activity Date

Mail questionnaires/internet invitations to schools, request teacher lists August, 2015

Mail second questionnaire package to non-responding schools September, 2015

Mail third package to non-responding schools December, 2015

Mail fourth package to non-responding schools February, 2016

Telephone follow-up with schools to obtain teacher lists September 2015 – October 2015

Clerical research operation to obtain teacher lists October 2015 – November 2015

Mail Teacher Questionnaires as teacher samples are drawn September 2015 – March 2016

Telephone follow-up to obtain school, principal, and teacher questionnaires February 2016 – March 2016

Field follow-up to obtain teacher lists, school, principal, and teacher 

questionnaires September 2015 – May 2016

Data capture of all questionnaires September 2015 – June 2016

Data processing January 2016 – December 2016

Analysis of the internet experiment September 2015 – December 2016

17. Approval to not Display Expiration Date for OMB Approval

We are not seeking approval to not display the expiration date of OMB approval.

18. Exception to the Certification Statement

No exception to the certification statement is being requested.