Addressing Reporting Challenges for NAEP Private Schools Through Multi-Year Data Integration

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often referred to as “The Nation’s Report Card,” faces persistent reporting challenges for private schools. These challenges have intensified as participation rates, particularly among non-Catholic private schools, have declined substantially, raising concerns about nonresponse bias and limiting the reporting of private school results. To address these challenges, a methodology developed in collaboration with NCES explores combining assessment years through the use of matched substitute schools from prior assessment cycles. Schools are matched on key characteristics including school type, census region, school size, and urbanicity. Results from a 2017-2019 application show improvements in sample size, representativeness, and effective response rates, as measured by Hellinger distance and Kullback-Leibler divergence. The paper also discusses limitations of the approach, including shrinking donor pools associated with declining response rates and current NCES statistical standards that do not permit substituted schools to contribute toward official response rate calculations. Finally, a three-year framework using the 2022, 2024, and 2026 assessment cycles is proposed as a potential extension to further improve representativeness and reporting utility.