Appendix B

Assessment of Relevant Publications

In addition to reviewing databases, the committee conducted a broad review of organizations that compile data and prepare reports related to equity in K–12 education. Our review considered both government agencies and nongovernmental organizations; we also looked at efforts that targeted equity from the outset as their raison d’etre (such as briefs from the Civil Rights Data Collection [CRDC] and Race for Results—see below), in addition to efforts that included relevant indicators without a specific equity focus. The review identified 19 organizations that publish relevant reports: see Table B-1.

The reports and briefs of these organizations are intended for a wide spectrum of audiences. Some of the organizations are involved in all the steps of producing indicator reports, from collecting data to reporting the results (e.g., NCES). Others make use of data collected by government agencies to develop their own indicators and associated reports (e.g., Child Trends). Still others make use of indicators developed by others to include in their own reports. Some organizations publish reports on a regular basis, most often annually (e.g., Kids Count); others publish briefs when the findings warrant (e.g., Child Trends, CRDC).

In addition to the list of organizations in Table B-1, the Pell Institute for Higher Education has a publication series on indicators of equity in higher education, which we do not include because the committee’s charge is for K–12 education. The Pell Institute series covers such topics as high school students with college potential, who enrolls in college and what types of college, whether financial aid levels the playing field, how students pay for college, and graduation rates and early income outcomes. Indicators are

TABLE B-1 Organizations and Their Reports with Indicators of Educational Equity

presented for student groups identified by race and ethnicity and family income levels, and the Institute’s 2018 report provides indicators for states.¹ The European Union has also undertaken work over the past decade on measuring educational equity among member countries for student groups defined by family income and immigrant status.

The committee’s review identified reports from seven organizations as meriting in-depth exploration, using the criteria in Box B-1:

• Annie E. Casey Foundation: Kids Count Data Book and Race for Results
• Council of the Great City Schools: Academic Key Performance Indicators: 2018 Report
• Education Law Center and Rutgers University: Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card on Funding Fairness
• Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics: America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being
• National Center for Education Statistics: Condition of Education and Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups
• National Institute for Early Education Research, Rutgers University: State of Preschool yearbooks
• U.S. Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights: Civil Rights Data Collection First Look Issue Briefs and Special Reports

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¹ See http://pellinstitute.org/indicators/reports_2018_data.shtml.

These reports collectively include indicators that measure students’ academic achievement and progress; school systems’ mechanisms for monitoring access to the resources all students need; the inputs students bring to school with them from their homes, families, and neighborhoods; and outcomes that extend from pre-K through K–12 and beyond. All of them publish some or all indicators for one or more student groups of interest. However, none of them includes a full set of the K–12 educational equity indicators the committee identifies or the full spectrum of student groups or geographic units of interest. Indeed, most of them are limited in scope, student group coverage, and geographic detail, and almost none of them articulates an equity-focused framework for the selection of indicators to publish. Nonetheless, they illustrate how the topic of K–12 educational equity is currently addressed, identifying work that a set of K–12 educational equity indicators could draw on as well as gaps and data and methodological shortcomings (see Appendix C).

ANNIE E. CASEY FOUNDATION

The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT Data Center “seeks to enrich local, state and national discussions concerning ways to secure better futures for all children—and to raise the visibility of children’s issues through a nonpartisan, evidence-based lens.” The center draws on national, state, and local data sources and publications. Annually, the foundation publishes the KIDS Count Data Book: State Trends in Child Well-Being, based on the KIDS Count index, which ranks states on 16 indicators in four domains (with four indicators in each domain): (1) economic well-being, (2) education, (3) health, and (4) family and community.

Table B-2 details the four education indicators in the index, showing their source, periodicity, student groups covered, geographic areas covered, and relevance to the committee’s proposed indicators.² The economic well-being and family and community indicators provide context.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation began publication of its KIDS Count index in 1990 and revised the index in 2012 to include the four domains and 16 indicators. The index is not published for groups of children, except at the national level by race and ethnicity (with data for the states available in the KIDS Count Data Center).

The foundation subsequently developed an index, published in Race for Results: Building a Path to Opportunity for All Children, to focus explicitly on children’s prospects for success as an adult in each state. The new index, first published in 2014 and updated in 2017, was based on an aspirational

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² The Data Center provides additional education indicators not included in the index: see https://datacenter.kidscount.org/.

goal: all children should grow up in economically successful families; live in supportive communities; and meet developmental, health, and educational milestones. The index comprises 12 indicators that were comparably and regularly collected in every state through surveys sufficient in size to allow valid estimates for the five largest racial groups (African-American, American Indian, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Latino, and White); 4 of the 12 indicators are the 4 education indicators that are part of the KIDS Count index.³

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³ For the full set of indicators, see https://www.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/AECF-RaceforResults2014.pdf#page=33.

TABLE B-2 Education Indicators in the KIDS Count Index

^aLatest year at time of latest publication (see SOURCE below).

^bFor the definition of ACGR (Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate), see https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post/what-is-the-difference-between-the-acgr-and-the-afgrfor definition.

NOTE: NAEP, National Assessment of Educational Progress.

SOURCE: Information from The Annie E. Casey Foundation (2018).

COUNCIL OF THE GREAT CITY SCHOOLS

The Council of the Great City Schools began a project in 2014 to develop key academic and cost performance indicators for 74 urban districts that are members of the Council. The first phase was a pilot study in which 8 member districts initially participated, followed by a second phase in which general education, special education, English-language learner, finance, and research department representatives narrowed down a preliminary set of 200 indicators to about 58 indicators. In a third phase, data were collected and results published for about a dozen academic indicators for about 50 member districts for the 2015-2016 school year.⁴ The data have been updated for the 2016-2017 school year, again for about 50 districts (although all 74 were asked to participate).

Table B-3 describes the academic key performance indicators in the latest Council report for 2016-2017, showing their source, periodicity, student groups covered, geographic areas covered, and relevance to the committee’s proposed indicators. The data are still considered preliminary and so are not immediately relevant to the committee’s set of education equity indicators. However, the processes and steps the Council followed to assess the feasibility and burden of providing the indicators and to reach consensus among the member districts as to their value may carry lessons for implementation of the committee’s recommended set.

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⁴Academic Key Performance Indicators: Pilot Report (October 2017); see https://www.cgcs.org/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&ModuleInstanceID=1044&ViewID=C9E0416E-F0E7-4626-AA7B-C14D59F72F85&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=3545&PageID=836. Work on cost indicators was deferred until after the academic indicators were fully developed.

TABLE B-3 Indicators in Academic Key Performance Indicators: 2018 Report

^aTo date, the Council of the Great City Schools has published reports for 2016 and 2018; whether the reports will be annual, biannual, or on issued on another schedule is not known. Except for NAEP scores, all of the indicators are potentially available on an annual basis.

^bDisability status not defined.

^cAP-equivalent participation and participation in college courses also collected but not published.

NOTES: AP, Advanced Placement; GPA, grade point average; NAEP, National Assessment of Educational Progress.

SOURCE: Information from Academic Key Performance Indicators 2018 Report (October 2018), available: https://www.cgcs.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=1044&dataid=3545&FileName=Final%20KPI%20Report%202017.pdf.

EDUCATION LAW CENTER AND RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

The Education Law Center and Rutgers University have collaborated since 2010 on an annual publication that assesses the fairness of funding for K–12 public education state by state. Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card on Funding Fairness presents data on four indicators of “fairness” and three indicators of resource allocation. Box B-2 presents the principles on which the published fairness and resource allocation indi-

cators are based; Table B-4 describes each of the seven indicators, showing its source, periodicity, student groups covered, geographic areas covered, and relevance to the committee’s proposed indicators.

TABLE B-4 Indicators in Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card on Funding Fairness

^aThe adjustment is based on a model that predicts average funding levels (state plus local), controlling for student poverty, regional wage variation, and school district size and density.

^bThe NCES Comparable Wage Index (CWI) is a measure of regional variations in the salaries of college graduates who are not educators; see updated NCES CWI data beginning in 2005 based on 3-year average ACS data at http://bush.tamu.edu/research/faculty/Taylor_CWI/.

^cProgressive: high-poverty (30%+) districts receive at least 5 percent additional funds over low-poverty (0%) districts; regressive: high-poverty districts receive 5 percent less funding than low-poverty districts; flat: in between.

NOTES: ACS, American Community Survey (Census Bureau program); BEA, Bureau of Economic Analysis; CCD, Common Core of Data (NCES program); N.A., not applicable; SAIPE, Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (Census Bureau program).

SOURCE: Information from Baker, Farrie, and Sciarra (2018).

FEDERAL INTERAGENCY FORUM ON CHILD AND FAMILY STATISTICS

The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics fosters coordination and collaboration among 23 federal agencies that produce or use statistical data on children and families. Through the America’s Children series, the forum makes federal data on children and families available in a nontechnical, easy-to-use format in order to stimulate discussion among data providers, policy makers, and the public.

The forum publishes an annual report on the well-being of children and families, alternating between the longer America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well Being and America’s Children in Brief. The full reports and the forum’s website provide statistics on 41 indicators:⁵

The indicators cover seven domains: family and social environment, economic circumstances, health care, physical environment and safety, behavior, education, and health. Because the briefer reports do not cover every domain every year, any one domain, such as education, is published at least biannually but not necessarily annually. Moreover, not all indicators within a domain are available annually.

Of the 41 indicators, 6 are devoted to education. Table B-5 defines each of the six, indicating source, periodicity, student groups covered, geographic areas covered, and relevance to the committee’s indicators. Indicators in the family and social environment and economic circumstances domains provide context.

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⁵ Forum on Child and Family Statistics; available: https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/index.asp.

TABLE B-5 Education Indicators in America’s Children

^aLatest year at time of latest publication (see SOURCE below).

^bAlgebra 1, geometry, algebra 2, advanced mathematics, calculus, advanced placement (AP) math, biology, chemistry, physics, AP science.

NOTES: CCD, Common Core of Data (NCES program); CPS, Current Population Survey (Census Bureau program); CRDC, Civil Rights Data Collection (Office of Civil Rights program); GED, general education diploma; N.A., not applicable; NAEP, National Assessment of Educational Progress; NHES, National Household Education Survey (NCES program).

SOURCE: Information from Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics (2017).

NATIONAL CENTER FOR EDUCATION STATISTICS

Condition of Education

Condition of Education reports are issued annually by NCES in compliance with a congressional mandate. The reports contain indicators on the state of education in the United States, from pre-kindergarten through postsecondary education, as well as labor force outcomes and international comparisons. For pre-K through grade 12, there are indicators of family characteristics, enrollment, teachers and staff, assessments, high school completion, and school finance. More detailed information, on which the reports are based, is available in the annual Digest of Education Statistics.⁶

The data for these indicators are obtained from many different providers—including students and teachers, state education agencies, local elementary and secondary schools, and colleges and universities—using surveys and compilations of administrative records. Most indicators in the reports summarize data collected by surveys conducted by NCES or by the Census Bureau with support from NCES, such as the American Community Survey (ACS) and the Current Population Survey (CPS).

The Condition of Education includes an At a Glance section, which allows readers to quickly make comparisons within and across indicators, and a Highlights section, which “spotlights” key findings for a few of the indicators. Table B-6 defines topic areas for which regularly collected indicators are provided for pre-K through grade 12 in the latest (2018) Condition of Education, indicating source, periodicity, student groups covered, geographic areas covered, and relevance to the committee’s indicators.⁷

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⁶ See https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/.

⁷ In addition to the indicators shown, Condition of Education reports on children’s access to and use of the Internet, measured in CPS supplements in October 2010 and July 2015; family involvement in educational activities outside school, measured in 2012 and 2016 in NHES; school crime and safety, measured periodically in the NCES Survey on School Crime and Safety; public school teacher turnover, measured in a 2012-2013 Teacher Follow-up Survey to the 2011-2012 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS); characteristics of public school principals, measured periodically in SASS (latest estimates for 2011-2012); public school principal turnover, measured in a 2012-2013 Principal Follow-up Survey to the 2011-2012 SASS; trends in reading and math scale scores for 9-, 13-, and 17-year-olds from 1971 through 2012, measured in long-term trend NAEP; technology and engineering literacy for 8th graders, measured by NAEP in 2014; and high school graduates by completion of math and science courses, measured in 2000 and 2009 NAEP high school transcript studies.

TABLE B-6 Indicators in the Condition of Education

^aLatest year at time of latest publication (see SOURCE below).

^bAdditional student group detail available in the annual Digest of Education Statistics.

^cAdditional geographic detail available in the annual Digest of Education Statistics.

NOTES: The information covers public schools unless otherwise noted. ACS, American Community Survey; CCD, Common Core of Data; CPS SES, Current Population Survey School Enrollment Supplement; CRDC, Civil Rights Data Collection; ELL, English-language learner; GED, general education diploma; IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; N.A., not available; NAEP, National Assessment of Educational Progress; NCES, National Center for Education Statistics: NTPS, National Teacher and Principal Survey.

SOURCE: Information from McFarland et al. (2018).

Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups

NCES began issuing reports that focus on the educational progress and challenges facing students in the United States by race and ethnicity in 2003 with Status and Trends in the Education of Blacks and Status and Trends in the Education of Hispanics. These reports were followed in 2005 by Status and Trends in the Education of American Indians and Alaska Natives (updated in 2008). In 2007, 2010, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2019, NCES published Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups; presumably, this report will be a continuing series.

Table B-7 defines topic areas for which regularly collected indicators are provided for pre-K through grade 12 in the latest Status and Trends report, indicating source, periodicity, student groups covered, geographic areas covered, and relevance to the committee’s indicators. Note that some indicators in Status and Trends are similar to those in the Condition of Education, but Status and Trends contains some additional indicators.⁸

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⁸Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups, 2018 (February 2019) also reports on: childcare arrangements for children under 6 (measured periodically in the National Household Education Survey); high school course taking and whether earned AP or IB credits (measured in the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009); and school safety (measured in the Youth Risk Behavior Survey and the School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey for 2015).

TABLE B-7 Indicators in Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups

^aLatest year at time of latest publication (see SOURCE below).

NOTES: ACS, American Community Survey; CCD, Common Core of Data; CPS ASEC, Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement; CPS SES, Current Population Survey School Enrollment Supplement; CRDC, Civil Rights Data Collection; NAEP: National Assessment of Educational Progress.

SOURCE: Data from de Brey et al. (2019).

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR EARLY EDUCATION RESEARCH

NIEER at Rutgers University in 2003 began issuing annual reports on the extent and quality of state pre-K education for children ages 3 and 4. The latest yearbook (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2018, p. 5) notes that, as of the 2001-2002 school year, just two states had pre-K programs that served greater than 50 percent of their 4-year-olds, and 13 states had no state-funded pre-K program. As of 2017, 10 states served more than 50 percent of their 4-year-olds, and only 7 states had no state-funded program.

The NIEER yearbooks provide indicators for access, resources, and quality of pre-K programs for the 50 states and the District of Columbia. States are ranked on measures of access and resources, and the number of quality benchmarks they meet is totaled (from 1 to 10). Table B-8 defines topic areas and indicators for each state in the latest (2017) State of Preschool yearbook, indicating source, periodicity, student groups covered, geographic areas covered, and relevance to the committee’s indicators. Because pre-K programs vary among and within states, the state profiles in the NIEER yearbooks contain text explaining each state’s programs—for example, whether they are offered in all school districts or those meeting a poverty criterion, hours of operation, teacher qualifications, whether they partner with Head Start, and other pertinent information.

TABLE B-8 Indicators in the State of Preschool Yearbooks

^aLatest year at time of latest publication (see SOURCE below).

^bThe 10 policy areas and latest benchmarks are: (1) early learning and development standards: comprehensive, aligned, supported, culturally sensitive; (2) curriculum supports: approval process and supports; (3) teacher degree: B.A.; (4) teacher specialized training: specializing in pre-K; (5) assistant teacher degree: Child Development Associate or equivalent credential; (6) staff professional development: at least 15 hours/year, individual development plans, coaching; (7) maximum class size: 20 children or fewer; (8) staff-child ratio: 1:10 or lower; (9) screening and referral: vision, hearing, and health screenings and referral; and (10) monitoring/continuous quality improvement system: structured classroom observation, program improvement plan. Area/benchmark (2) is new as of 2015-2016; a previous area/benchmark related to meals has been discontinued.

^cSpending includes current operating expenditures plus annual capital outlays and interest on school debt.

^dIn Rankings and Estimates: Rankings of the States 2016 and Estimates of School Statistics 2017; see http://www.nea.org/home/73145.htm [April 2019].

NOTES: DHHS, Department of Health and Human Services; IDEA: Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; N.A., not available; NEA, National Education Association; NIEER, National Institute for Early Education Research, Rutgers University.

SOURCE: Information from Friedman-Krauss et al. (2018).

U.S. OFFICE OF CIVIL RIGHTS DATA COLLECTION

The CRDC program in the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education regularly issues “First Look” issue briefs from each biannual cycle of data collection. The topics of these briefs differ from year to year. The two briefs issued to date (in April 2018) from the 2015-2016 data collection are the STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] Course Taking Issue Brief and the School Climate and Safety Issue Brief. The brief on STEM course taking presents 10 figures: one example is a bar graph of the percentage of high school enrollment by race and ethnicity; the percentage enrolled in algebra 1 for grades 9-10 and 11-12, by race and ethnicity; and the percentage passing algebra 1 for grades 9-10 and 11-12, by race and ethnicity.

The CRDC also provides ready access through a search feature to three special reports for school districts and schools: English Learner Report, Discipline Report, and Educational Equity Report, which are provided in Excel spreadsheets. Underlying the CRDC issue briefs and special reports are detailed tables of all data elements in the CRDC program for school districts and schools, together with summaries for states and the nation. We do not further describe the particular elements in the special reports or underlying CRDC database because, while very easy to access, they are not presented in the form of regularly published indicators as in the reports described above.⁹

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⁹ For more information about the CRDC and ways to access the data, see https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/data.html?src=rt.

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