The Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) was conducted by the national Center for Education Statistics (NCES) seven times between 1987 through 2011. SASS was an integrated study public and private school districts, schools, principals, and teachers designed to provide descriptive data on the context of elementary and secondary education. SASS covered a wide range of topics from teacher demand, teacher and principal characteristics, general conditions in schools, principals' and teachers' perceptions of school climate and problems in their schools, teacher compensation, district hiring and retention practices, to basic characteristics of the student population.

AIR provided support for all aspects of SASS, including developing questionnaires, assisting with sample design, writing code for data editing and data imputation, assisting with bias analyses of the data, providing disclosure review analyses, helping to define the data files, providing a quality review of data files, producing data products, survey documentation, and reports, providing training for data users, developing incentives and informational materials, and providing quick turnaround analysis upon request.