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NAEP Assessment Sample Design → NAEP 2007 Sample Design → Sample Design for the 2007 National Assessment → 2007 Private School National Assessment → Sampling Frame for the 2007 Private School National Assessment

NAEP Technical DocumentationSampling Frame for the 2007 Private School National Assessment

			Fourth-, Eighth-, and Twelfth-Grade Schools and Enrollment in Private School Sampling Frame New-School Sampling Frame for the Private School Assessments

The frame of the private schools in all three grades was developed from the 2003-2004 Private School Universe Survey (PSS), a survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The PSS is a biennial mail survey of all private schools in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The PSS frame of schools comprises both a list frame and an area frame. The list frame is an assembly of the 2001-2002 PSS frame and more up-to-date lists from state education agencies, private school associations, and other easily accessible sources. To improve the coverage of the PSS list frame, the Census Bureau also conducted a survey to locate private schools in a random sample of geographic areas throughout the United States. The areas were single counties or groups of counties sampled from an area frame constructed from all counties in the nation. Within each selected area a complete list of private schools was gathered using information from the Yellow Pages, religious institutions, local education agencies, chambers of commerce, and local government offices. Schools not already on the list frame were identified and added to the frame of private schools. A weighting component was computed by the Census Bureau so that the additional area-frame schools would represent all schools absent from the list frame, not just those in the selected area.

The sampling frame excluded all schools that were ungraded, were classified as vocational with no enrollment, provided only special education, were home-school entities, were juvenile correctional institutions, or were parts of prisons or hospitals.

For quality control purposes, school and student counts from the 2007 sampling frame were compared to school and student counts from previous frames (2003 and 2005). No major issues were found.

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