Data Sources – Politics of Education Research
Disclaimer: Lora Cohen-Vogel and students in her Politics of Education and Federal Role in Education courses at Florida State University compiled this list. Descriptions of the data sets were drawn largely from source materials themselves. The Politics of Education Association, and the officers thereof offer no endorsement of and assume no liability for the accuracy or availability of any information on external databases and websites listed here.
The Advocacy and Public Policymaking Project A data source compiled by Frank Baumgartner and others at Pennsylvania State University. Contains case summaries and political resources across multiple domains, including education. The case summaries provide overviews that include background information, key proponents/opponents, arguments used, lobbying activities, venues of government decision making, among other information. For each case, the site also includes links to advocacy group statements, bills introduced in Congress, transcripts of House and Senate committee hearings, statements and press releases by members of Congress, and media coverage (print and television) (http://lobby.la.psu.edu)
The American Presidency Project Searchable online resource housing state of the union addresses, proclamations, press conferences, inaugural addresses, radio addresses, addresses to Congress, fireside chats (FDR), veto messages, executive orders, addresses to foreign legislatures, party conventions, and college commencements, the messages and papers of the Presidents from Washington - Taft (1789-1913), the Public Papers of the Presidents from Hoover to Bush (1929-1993), and the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents from Clinton - G.W. Bush (1993-2008). (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/)
The Book of the States (1935-2009) Since 1935, the Council of State Governments has published the Book of the State. It contains information and comparisons for all 56 U.S. states and territories on various public policy areas including, for example, elections, education, state finance, government officials, and intergovernmental relations. (http://www.csg.org/policy/publications/bookofthestates.aspx)
Published studies using the Book of the States include:
Mintrom, M. (1997). Policy entrepreneurs and the diffusion of innovation. American Journal of Political Science, 41(3), 738-770.
Doyle, W.R. (2005). Adoption of merit-based student grant programs: An event history analysis. Educational Evaluation and Policy analysis, 28(3), 259-285.
Center for Education Reform The Center for Educational Reform has an interactive United States map available to access charter school laws across the country. (http://www.edreform.com/Home/)
Published studies using ECS data include:
Renzulli, L., & Roscigno, V. (2005). Charter school policy, implementation, and diffusion across the United States. Sociology of Education, 78(4), 344-365.
The Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac Published annually, the Almanac of Higher Education contains an assortment of key data about important trends in higher education. Data include, for example, information on endowments, revenues, faculty salaries, tenure, enrollment, and degrees conferred. A complete list of data elements is available at http://chronicle.com. Subscription ($40-$140) is required for access.
Published studies using the Almanac include:
Hearn, J. C., & Griswold, C. P. (1994). State-level centralization and policy innovation
in U. S. postsecondary education. Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 16 (2), 161-190.
The Education Commission of the States The Education Commission of the States (ECS) regularly issues compilations, summaries and/or comparisons of state policies on a wide variety of education issues, including accountability, affirmative action, bilingual education, charter schools, school choice, vouchers, teacher quality, and unions/collective bargaining, etc. A complete list of the topics, and data elements included in the ECS datasets can be found and downloaded from http://www.ecs.org/ecsmain.asp?page=html/educationIssues/ECSStateNotes.asp.
Published studies using ECS data include:
Mintrom, M. (1997). Policy entrepreneurs and the diffusion of innovation. American Journal of Political Science, 41(3), 738-770.
Government Documents Roundtable, Frequently used Sites A clearinghouse of on-line resources indexed by branches and levels of government and policy domains (e.g., education, healthcare). The U.S. legislative index, for example, includes all things Congressional, from a Congressional directories to advocate organizations’ ratings of Congressional performance to searchable collections of bills and GAO reports, to name a few. (http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/romans/fdtf)
Government Printing Office Visitors can view dockets of cases heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, read the oral arguments, and locate judicial opinions; read State of the Union addresses; and search proposed, pending, and final regulations and executive orders since 1994 in the Federal Register. (http://www.gpoaccess.gov/index.html)
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research ICPSR offers more than 500,000 digital files containing social science research data. Disciplines represented include political science, sociology, demography, economics, history, gerontology, criminal justice, public health, foreign policy, terrorism, health and medical care, early education, education, racial and ethnic minorities, psychology, law, substance abuse and mental health, and more. (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/ssvd/series)
Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies The Joint Center's DataBank is a comprehensive warehouse of data on racial populations. It includes, among other things, comparative data on education, economic empowerment, health, housing, and demographic information, as well as fact sheets on selected topics. (http://www.jointcenter.org/DB/index.htm)
The Lexis-Nexis Congressional Universe Comprehensive collection of historic and current congressional information that provides access to full text congressional publications and public laws. It includes, for example, selected transcripts and full-text statements from Congressional hearings since 1988, Committee reports since 1990, GAO reports since 2004, public law texts, U.S. Code, Code of Federal Regulations, campaign finance data, member profiles, and political news from The Hill and Roll Call. (Available through your university’s library.)
National Association of State Student Grant & Aid Program NASSGAP collects information annually on state-funded expenditures for postsecondary student financial aid. In addition to program expenditures, survey data include information on the types of aid programs available, program administration, and award eligibility and standards for each state. A complete list of the data elements can be found at www.nassgap.org, and an online query tool is available for customized queries of survey data. In addition to the NASSGAP survey, the Association also assembles data, reports, and research from a variety of sources such as ACT, Inc, the College Board, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Kids Count, and more.
Published studies using NASSGAP survey data include:
Doyle, W.R. (2005). Adoption of merit-based student grant programs: An event history analysis. Educational Evaluation and Policy analysis, 28(3), 259-285.
National Center for Education Statistics A variety of datasets are available from NCES:
Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey: The ECLS-K began in Fall of 1998 with a nationally representative sample of approximately 21,000 kindergartners from about 1,000 kindergarten programs, both public and private. These children were followed longitudinally through the eighth grade, with data collections in the fall and spring of kindergarten and first grade, in the spring of third and fifth grade, and follow-ups in eighth grade. (http://nces.ed.gov/ecls/)
The National Household Education Surveys Program: NHES provides descriptive data on the educational activities of the U.S. population and offers researchers, educators, and policymakers a variety of statistics on the condition of education in the United States. The NHES surveys cover learning at all ages, from early childhood to school age through adulthood. The most recent data collection in 2007 consisted of two surveys: Parent and Family Involvement in Education and School Readiness. (http://nces.ed.gov/nhes/)
The Beginning Teacher Longitudinal Study: BTLS is a new study of a cohort of beginning public school teachers initially interviewed as part of the 2007-08 Schools and Staffing Survey. The study will create an unfolding “story” by following this cohort of first-year teachers for a decade. (http://nces.ed.gov//surveys/btls/)
High School Longitudinal Study: In 2009, NCES launched the High School Longitudinal Study. It will follow a cohort of more than 25,000 9th graders through their high school, postsecondary, and early career experiences, focusing on college decision-making and on math learning based on a new algebra assessment. Data will be collected from students, administrators, math and science teachers, school counselors (new!), parents, and administrative records. (http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/hsls09/)
The Schools and Staffing Survey: SASS collects extensive data on American public and private elementary and secondary schools. Teachers, principals, schools, school districts and library media centers are components of the SASS survey system. SASS provides data on characteristics and qualifications of teachers and principals, teacher hiring practices, professional development, class size and other conditions in schools. (http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/)
The National Assessment of Educational Progress: NAEP, also known as "the Nation's Report Card," is the only nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know and can do in various subject areas. Since 1969, assessments have been conducted periodically in reading, mathematics, science, writing, U.S. history, civics, geography, and the arts. (http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/)
National Institute on Money in State Politics The National Institute on Money in State Politics maintains a database of campaign contributions data by state, sector and individual. It collects the data for all state-level candidates in the primary and general elections from the state disclosure agencies with which candidates must file their campaign finance reports. (http://www.followthemoney.org/)
The Odum Institute for Research in Social Science The Odum Institute maintains one of the oldest and largest archives of machine-readable data in the U.S. Its Louis Harris Data Center is the exclusive national repository for Louis Harris public opinion data. The Institute has an extensive collection of U.S. Census data, including one of the most complete holdings for 1970 Census files. Other major sources of data include the North Carolina State Data Center, which distributes North Carolina census data; and the National Center for Health Statistics. Its National Network of State Polls archive is recognized as the largest available collection of state-level surveys. (http://152.2.32.107/odum/jsp/content_node.jsp?nodeid=12)
The Policy Agendas Project A publicly available archive housed at the University of Washington. Provides archived historical data on the U.S. budget, House, Senate and joint-committee hearings of the U.S. Congress, Executive Orders, Gallup Poll information, State of the Union addresses, Supreme Court cases, and data on public laws passed between 1948-1998. (http://www.policyagendas.org/)
Presidential Libraries Everyday, presidential libraries are making their massive collections available to researchers on-line. The Nixon Library, for example, has nearly 50 million pages of documents, over 300,000 photographs, thousands of motion pictures and videos, and the Nixon White House Tapes, many of which have now been made available via the Internet. (http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/virtuallibrary/index.php)
The ProQuest Historical Newspapers™ digital archive Offers full-text and full-image articles in the nation’s leading newspapers dating back to the 18th Century. The archive includes the complete collection of The New York Times, beginning with its first issue in 1851. New additions to the archive include the Black Newspapers Collection, providing access to the New York Amsterdam News, Pittsburgh Courier, Los Angeles Sentinel and Atlanta Daily World. (Available through your university’s library.)
Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 The Retrospective indexes articles from over 375 leading magazines, many dating back to their inaugural issues. (Available through many university libraries; Search the Retrospective using WilsonWeb.)
Roper Center Public Opinion Archives The Center has the oldest and most comprehensive collection of public opinion survey datasets in the world. The focus of the collection is on surveys from the United States, although many surveys from Europe, Latin America and Asia have been acquired, some dating back to the 1940s and 1950s. (http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/data/survey_collection_coverage.html)
Thomas Project, Library of Congress A comprehensive on-line source of bills introduced in the House and/or Senate beginning with the 101st Congress. The site also allows visitors to search the Congressional Record, the official account of all floor proceedings and debates of the U.S. Congress; reports from Senate, House and Joint/Conference Committees since the 104th Congress; and the United States Code. (http://thomas.loc.gov/)
United States Department of Education: Speeches and Press Releases Visitors can search official DOE press releases and speeches given by the Secretary of Education and other key DOE officials since 2001. There is also a link to an archive of speeches from previous administrations back through 1994. (http://www.ed.gov/news/landing.jhtml)