ED response to OMB passback questions

Memorandum United States Department of Education

Institute of Education Sciences

National Center for Education Statistics

DATE: February 17, 2017

TO: Robert Sivinski and E. Ann Carson, OMB

THROUGH: Kashka Kubzdela, OMB Liaison, NCES

FROM: Amy Ho and Andy Zukerberg, NCES

SUBJECT: 2017-2018 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) Portal Usability Testing – Responses to OMB Passback (OMB# 1850-0803 v.189)

Below please find NCES responses to OMB passback received on February 17, 2017.

1. Why do the test subjects have to use a list of actual teachers from their school? Couldn’t they be provided a fake list (in both printed out and Excel file formats) to use in the test?  Would people be more likely to volunteer if they didn’t have to give out PII on actual people?

NCES Response: We’d like the respondent to go through the motion of providing an actual list so that we can observe how they would go through the process. Learning about how school staff actually go through the process of providing a list for NTPS is important so that we can find ways to make it easier for them. The interviewer will observe and take notes on how the staff looks for the information, how easy or difficult it is to either write, type, or upload the information…etc. Going through the process of getting the actual/real information is an important part of this usability testing. We don’t have to necessarily keep the actual information if PII is the concern.

2. In a quick perusal of DC public and private schools, I only find 12 that have enrollments of 750 or more.  Since these will also likely have more teachers that the person would need to report on, how confident is the NTPS PM in hitting his/her target of 5 schools of this size?  And if s/he doesn’t get 5 schools, how will s/he account for this in her/his analysis of the results?

NCES Response: We will do our best to meet our target and realize it will be a challenge. However, it is also worth noting that this is a qualitative study and the desired sample sizes are approximate. Additionally, per Volume 1, we plan to recruit 10-20 individuals who work at schools in the metropolitan DC area that offer at least one of grades 1-12. In addition to DC public and private schools, this also includes schools in Maryland and northern Virginia. Regardless of the number of schools that participate, we will analyze the data that we are able to get and discuss the limitations of the results in the summary report.