RAND American School District Panel. Creation and Technical Description. RR-A956-10

The American Educator Panels (AEP) are nationally representative samples of teachers, school leaders, and district leaders across the country. The American School District Panel (ASDP) is a partnership among the RAND Corporation, the Center on Reinventing Public Education, Chiefs for Change, the Council of the Great City Schools, and Kitamba. The ASDP was created as the third member of the RAND AEP, joining the American Teacher Panel and the American School Leader Panel. Each panel uses probability-based methods to recruit members (districts, principals, and teachers) and then to conduct surveys periodically throughout the school year, producing high-quality data covering a wide range of K-12 education topics. This report describes the ASDP sample design, methods used to recruit districts to join the panel, recruitment results through the first several rounds of enrolling districts into the panel, and methods employed to weight ASDP data to the national population of K-12 public school districts in the United States. An important part of the recruitment strategy was the use of "trusted partners" to support district enrollment. Trusted partners are organizations that districts and charter management organizations have an existing, positive relationship with and that support the goals of the ASDP.