October is National Principals Month! This celebration marks the invaluable leadership contributions of U.S. K–12 public and private school principals.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) would like to thank principals and administrators from across the country whose support and guidance improve their schools and the successes of their students and staff each and every day.

The data in this blog would not be possible without the participation of principals and school staff in the National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS). We have recently concluded the 2023–24 NTPS; to learn more about our most recent data on teachers’ and principals’ experiences and perspectives, please stay tuned to NCES’s website for upcoming reports.

Here are some facts and figures about principals from the NTPS for the 2020–21 school year. Click the links to dig deeper into each of the topics.

Principals’ Educational Attainment, Salary, and Professional Experiences in the 2020–21 school year

• About 7 percent of all K-12 public and private school principals had a bachelor’s degree or less, nearly 60 percent had a master’s degree, about 22 percent had an education specialist or professional diploma,[1] and nearly 11 percent had a doctorate or first professional degree.
• The average annual salary for all principals was $100,500 and ranged from $92,800 for principals with less than 3 years of experience to $106,900 for principals with 10 years of experience or more.
• All principals had an average of 7 total years of experience and an average of 5 years at their current school.
• Among all public school principals in 2020–21, six percent of principals moved to become principal of a new school between the 2020–21 and 2021–22 school years and 11 percent left the profession altogether, while about 80 percent stayed to lead the same school during the 2021–22 school year (figure 1).

Figure 1. Percentage distribution of 2020–21 public school principals, by 2021–22 status

Principal Satisfaction in the 2020–21 School Year

• The 2020–21 NTPS asked all K–12 public and private school principals to rate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with six different statements about their position as a principal (figure 2).
  • About 94 percent of all principals agreed that they were generally satisfied with being a principal at their school.
  • About 34 percent indicated they don’t seem to have as much enthusiasm now as they did when they began their job.
  • About 24 percent indicated they would leave their job as soon as possible if they could get a higher-paying job.
  • About 17 percent indicated the stress and disappointments involved in being a principal at their school weren’t really worth it.
  • Some 17 percent of all principals agreed that they thought about staying home from school because they were just too tired to go.
  • About 17 percent thought about transferring to another school.

Figure 2. Percentage of all K–12 school principals who agreed with statements about their position as a principal: 2020–21

Demographics and Other Characteristics of Principals in the 2020–21 school year

• All K–12 public and private school principals had an average of 7 total years of experience and an average of 5 years at their current school.
• Most principals (78 percent) were White, while about 9 percent were Black or African-American and 9 percent were Hispanic.^[2] Over half of all principals were women (57 percent),^[3] and 43 percent were White women (figure 3).
• The average age of all principals was 49 years old, and the median age was 48 years old.
• About 33 percent of all principals were younger than 45 years old, about 41 percent were between 45–54 years old, and 26 percent were 55 years or older.

Figure 3. Percentage distribution of all K–12 school principal sex by race/ethnicity: 2020–21

For more information about the National Teacher and Principal Survey, please visit https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/ntps/. More findings and details are available in the NTPS school, teacher, and principal First Look reports.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) offers a variety of tools to support hurricane planning, response, and recovery efforts. These resources provide crucial data on educational institutions and infrastructure, helping decision-makers during this critical time. Below is an overview of the key NCES resources available to assist with hurricane response activities.

Key NCES Resources

Interactive Web Maps and APIs

Figure 1: School Weather Watch - Hurricane Milton

NCES provides interactive maps with detailed information on educational institutions across the United States, including the School Weather Watch - Hurricane Milton.

These maps are accessible via application programming interface (APIs), allowing users to easily integrate these data into their own applications. Available resources identify:

• Private School Locations
• Public School Locations
• Public School District Boundaries
• Postsecondary Institution Locations

Public and Private School Search Tools

• The Elementary/Secondary Information System (ELSI): A web application that enables users to view data and create reports on public and private schools across various metrics.
• Private School Search Tool: Search for private schools by state county, or ZIP Code to access detailed information, including addresses, enrollment numbers, and other key data.
• Public School Search Tool: Find public schools by state, county, or ZIP Code to access detailed information, including addresses, enrollment numbers, and other key data.

Postsecondary and Public School District Lookup Tools

School district boundaries and postsecondary institutions are critical for planning resource allocation and understanding affected regions.

• College Navigator: Search for postsecondary institutions by location, programs offered, and other characteristics.
• Public School District Lookup: Explore district boundaries and access information about schools within those districts.

School District Demographic Information

NCES also provides demographic data for school districts, derived from the American Community Survey. This information helps users understand the populations served by each district and is available through the NCES's School District Demographic Dashboard. Additionally, these data can be accessed through NCES’s ACS-ED Maps.

How These Resources Can Assist

By offering comprehensive, real-time access to school system data, NCES helps emergency planners, local authorities, and relief organizations make informed decisions. Whether assessing potential school closures or identifying facilities for emergency shelters, these tools ensure that educational considerations are integrated into broader response and recovery efforts.

Additional Resources

• U.S. Department of Education's Natural Disaster Resources
• Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
• Ready.gov
• NCES's Education Demographic and Geographic Estimates (EDGE) program

By Josue DeLaRosa and Douglas Geverdt, NCES

Note: This post was updated October 12th, 2024, with current link to the School Weather Watch resource.

Recently, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2023–24 (ECLS-K:2024) wrapped up our first school year of data collection! Among the data collected was information provided by the study children’s parents. Without parents’ participation in the ECLS-K:2024, we wouldn’t have a detailed understanding of America’s children, their families, and their lives outside of school. Parents’ participation allows us to explore how different factors—at home and at school—relate to children’s development and learning over time.  

For ECLS-K:2024, much of the information we are collecting from parents has been collected from kindergartners’ parents in earlier ECLS program studies. Having data about different group of kindergartners across time will allow NCES and researchers to examine changes over the past decades. One thing that’s new for the ECLS-K:2024 are questions on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as how the pandemic affected parents and their family, including the study child. This information will help the public and state, local, and federal policymakers understand how to better support this generation of children.

For past ECLS kindergarten cohorts, we have collected a wealth of demographic data about participating children’s families that can be analyzed in conjunction with other data collected directly from the children themselves and their schools and teachers to shed light on influences on children’s school experiences and development. For instance, The Condition of Education’s “Characteristics of Children’s Families” uses data from the ECLS program studies along with other National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) study data to help us understand trends in children’s family composition over the years, such as the percentage of children living with a single male parent, with a single female parent, and in two-parent households. The ECLS-K:2024 data being collected now will allow us to add to these analyses, for example by examining data on same sex parent households and multigenerational households.   

Information on many parental and family characteristics is provided by parents in the ECLS-K:2024. The ECLS-K:2024 data extends our view, at the national level, of children’s family backgrounds and how they have changed over the years on a variety of dimensions beyond type of parent or parents in household. For example, from an analysis of the ECLS-K:2011 data, we know that 84 percent of first-time kindergartners in 2010-11 came from a household with English as the primary home language, 15 percent from a household with a language other than English as the primary home language, and 1 percent from a household with multiple home languages (no primary language identified). Has this pattern in family home language of our nation’s kindergartners changed since 2010-11? The ECLS-K:2024 data parents provided last school year will let us know.

The ECLS study team, as well as thousands of researchers, policymakers, educators, and parents, are excited to see what the ECLS-K:2024 parent-provided data tell us about today’s kindergartners and families, as well as any changes we see for today’s kindergartners as compared to those from 1998-99 and 2010-11.  Thank you to our ECLS-K:2024 parents for contributing to the study and helping us learn more about America’s children and families!

Want to learn more? 

• Check out this brief video about the ECLS program.
• Read up on the ECLS-K:2024 on NCES’s ECLS website or our ECLS website for study participants.
• Find resources for parents, teachers, and school administrators that use ECLS and other NCES data in our ECLS newsletters.
• Find other ECLS posts on the NCES Blog.
• Sign up for the NCES Newsflash.
• Follow NCES on LinkedIn, X, and Facebook.

Plus, be on the lookout early this fall for the next ECLS blog post celebrating the ECLS-K:2024, which will highlight schools, teachers, and principals. Stay tuned!

By Korrie Johnson and Jill Carlivati McCarroll, NCES

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has released an updated data table (Excel) on local education agencies (LEAs)¹  that serve multiple counties. This new data table—which was updated with 2022–23 data—can help researchers examine LEA structures and break down enrollment by LEA and county. Read this blog post to learn more about the table and how it can be used to understand structural differences in school districts.

The data table—which compiles data from both the Common Core of Data (CCD) and Demographic and Geographic Estimates (EDGE)—provides county and student enrollment information on each LEA in the United States (i.e., in the 50 states and the District of Columbia) with a separate row for each county in which the agency has a school presence. The table includes all LEA types, such as regular school districts, independent charter school districts, supervisory union administrative centers, service agencies, state agencies, federal agencies, specialized public school districts, and other types of agencies.

LEA presence within a county is determined by whether it had at least one operating school in the county. School presence within a county is determined by whether there is at least one operating school in the county identified in the CCD school-level membership file. For example, an LEA that is coterminous with a county has one record (row) in the listing. A charter school LEA that serves a region of a state and has a presence in five counties has five records. LEA administrative units, which do not operate schools, are listed in the county in which the agency is located.

In the 2022–23_LEA_List tab, column D shows the “multicnty” (i.e., multicounty) variable. LEAs are assigned one of the following codes:

1 = School district (LEA) is in single county and has reported enrollment.

2 = School district (LEA) is in more than one county and has reported enrollment.

8 = School district (LEA) reports no schools and no enrollment, and the county reflects county location of the administrative unit. 

9 = School district (LEA) reports schools but no enrollment, and the county reflects county location of the schools.

In the Values tab, the “Distribution of local education agencies, by enrollment and school status: 2022–23” table shows the frequency of each of the codes (1, 2, 8, and 9) (i.e., the number of districts that are marked with each of the codes in the 2022–23_LEA_List tab):

• 17,042 LEAs had schools in only one county.
• 754 LEAs had schools located in more than one county and reported enrollment for these schools (note that in the file there are 1,936 records with this characteristic since each LEA is listed once for every county in which it has a presence).
• 1,008 LEAs had no schools of their own and were assigned to a single county based on the location of the LEA address. (Typically, supervisory union administrative centers are examples of these LEAs.)
• 262 LEAs had schools located in one county but did not report enrollment for these schools (note that in the file there are 384 records with this characteristic since each LEA is listed once for every county in which it has a presence).

This data table is part of our effort to meet emerging data user needs and provide new products in a timely manner. Be sure to follow NCES on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube and subscribe to the NCES News Flash to stay informed when these new products are released.

By Tom Snyder, AIR

[1] Find the official definition of an LEA.

[2] See Number and enrollment of public elementary and secondary schools, by school level, type, and charter, magnet, and virtual status: Selected years, 1990–91 through 2018–19; Enrollment of public elementary and secondary schools, by school level, type, and charter, magnet, and virtual status: School years 2010–11 through 2021–22 (ed.gov); Number of public elementary and secondary education agencies, by type of agency and state or jurisdiction: 2004–05 and 2005–06; and Number of public elementary and secondary education agencies, by type of agency and state or jurisdiction: School years 2020–21 and 2021–22.

[3] See Education Governance for the Twenty-First Century: Overcoming Structural Barriers to School Reform.

[4] The annual School District Finance Survey (F-33) is collected by NCES from state education agencies and the District of Columbia. See Documentation for the NCES Common Core of Data School District Finance Survey (F-33) for more information.

The National Center for Education Statistics recognizes the need to provide expanded economic data on education, including data about the education labor market. In this blog we will be presenting public education sector data from the February 2024 release of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) data produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. JOLTS data provide national monthly estimates of job openings, hires, and separations. These data can be used to monitor current labor market demand in education and to assess the presence or extent of labor shortages¹.

JOLTS Design

JOLTS is a monthly survey of about 21,000 public and private employers across all nonagricultural industries in the 50 States and District of Columbia. JOLTS estimates are produced by industry sector, including education². Additionally, JOLTS provides separate estimates for public and private education. This enables our analysis to focus on the public state and local education industry (“state and local government education” as referred to by JOLTS)³, which includes all persons employed by public elementary and secondary school systems and public postsecondary institutions.

The JOLTS program does not produce estimates by Standard Occupational Classification⁴. When reviewing these findings, please note occupations⁵ within the public state and local education industry vary⁶ (e.g., teachers and instructional aides, administrators, cafeteria workers, and transportation workers).

Analysis

This analysis of JOLTS data highlights key statistics describing employment availability, hiring, and turnover in public local and state education. Table 1 includes estimates on the number of job openings, hires, and separations from February 2020 through February 2024. Table 2 includes estimates on the corresponding rates of job openings, hires, separations, fill and churn rate measures from February 2020 through February 2024. The job openings rate is computed by dividing the number of job openings by the sum of employment and job openings. Metric rates for hires, total separations, quits, layoffs and discharges, and other separations are defined by taking the number of each metric and dividing it by employment. Fill rate and churn rates are calculated economic measures that are not readily available from the JOLTS database. Fill rate is defined as the ratio of the number of hires to the number of job openings and the churn rate is defined as the sum of the rate of hires and the rate of total separations^7,8.

Table 1. Number of job openings, hires, separations, and net change in employment in public state and local education, in thousands: February 2020 through February 2024

*Significantly different from February 2024 (p < .05).

NOTE: Data are not seasonally adjusted. Detail may not sum to totals because of rounding.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), 2020–2024, based on data downloaded April 2, 2024, from https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/dsrv?jt.

Table 2. Rate of job openings, hires, and separations in public state and local education and fill and churn rates: February 2020 through February 2024

*Significantly different from February 2024 (p < .05).

NOTE: Data are not seasonally adjusted. Detail may not sum to totals because of rounding.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), 2020–2024, based on data downloaded April 2, 2024, from https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/dsrv?jt.

Overview of February 2024 Estimates

The number of job openings in public state and local education was 226,000 on the last business day of February 2024, which was higher than in February 2021 (170,000) and lower than in February 2022 (322,000) and February 2023 (314,000) (Table 1). In percentage rate terms, 2.0 percent of jobs had openings in February 2024, which was lower than in February of the previous two years (3.0 percent in 2022 and 2.8 percent in 2023) (Table 2). The number and percentage of job openings in February 2024 were not measurably different from the number and percentage in February 2020. The number of hires in public state and local education was 107,000 for February 2024, which was not measurably different from in February of the previous three years, but was lower than February 2020 (141,000) (Table 1). The number of job openings at the end of February 2024 (226,000) was nearly double the number of staff hired that month (107,000). In addition, the fill rate for that month (0.5) was less than 1, which suggests a need for public state and local government education employees that was not being filled completely by February 2024.

The number of total separations in the state and local government education industry in February 2024 (80,000) was not measurably different from in February of the previous four years. In February 2024, the number of quits (56,000) was higher than the number of layoffs and discharges (17,000). Layoffs and discharges accounted for 21 percent of total separations in February 2024 (which as not measurably different from the percentage of layoffs and discharges out of total separations in February 2023, 2022, 2021, or 2020) while quits accounted for 70 percent of total separations (which was not measurably different from the percentage of quits out of total separations in February 2023, 2022, 2021, or 2010).

This blog is part of NCES’ effort to share more economic data from other federal statistical agencies that is relevant to education. We plan to provide regular updates to selected months from JOLTS to enable our data users to find and follow useful information about the education workforce.

By Josue DeLaRosa, NCES

¹ “Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey Overview Page.” BLS.gov.  Last modified November 28, 2022. https://www.bls.gov/jlt/jltover.htm