NAEP Technical DocumentationSampling Frame of Private Schools for the 2010 Assessment

The sampling frame for private schools was developed from the 2007-2008 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 2005-2006 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 telephone directories, 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 areas.

The sampling frame was restricted to schools located in the primary sampling units (PSUs) selected for NAEP 2010. In addition, the sampling frame excluded ungraded schools, vocational schools with no enrollment, special-education-only schools, homeschool entities, prison and hospital schools, and juvenile correctional institutions.

The following table presents the number of schools and estimated enrollment for the private school frame for grades 4, 8, and 12. The unweighted estimated enrollment is restricted to the selected PSUs. The weighted estimated enrollment incorporates the PSU weight (inverse of the probability of selecting the PSU), and thus is a national estimate of the number of private school students in each grade.

For quality control purposes, school and student counts from the sampling frame were compared to school and student counts from previous private school frames by grade. No major discrepancies were found.

Printer-friendly Version