Project

Supporting the Release of Digest of Education Statistics Reports for Two Decades

Overhead view of students at their desks

The Digest contains data on a variety of topics, including the number of schools, colleges, teachers, enrollments, and graduates; educational attainment; finances; federal funds for education; libraries; and international comparisons. Supplemental information, such as population trends and education characteristics of the labor force, provides background for data users to understand these topics.

Since 1962, the Digest of Education Statistics has compiled statistical tabulations on education in the United States from prekindergarten through graduate school. The Digest—a compendium of statistical tables that cover early childhood through adult education—provides a centralized location for data from nearly 100 sources.

These tables present both time-sensitive data that are used by decisionmakers at all levels (e.g., funding allocation, program implementation) and historical data that help to paint a picture of how education in the United States has changed and where changes might be needed.

For two decades, AIR supported the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in producing and continuously improving the Digest to ensure that the data were released in a timely manner and easy to find and use.

Our Impact

Each year, AIR helped produce and publish more than 400 statistical tables to provide accurate and timely education data to decision makers, researchers, and the public. To address emerging topics of policy and research interest, we assessed, added, and refined the content within the Digest on a regular basis. For example, in Digest 2023, we added a series of tables that highlight data on the teacher workforce and teacher salaries before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

AIR was instrumental in implementing several major changes to the Digest in recent years:

Transition to a web-based publication. AIR developed strategies and processes to support the year-round table releases while maintaining the quality of the data to improve the timeliness of its tables and adapt to the changing data access needs of its audiences. To this end, the Digest transitioned from a hybrid PDF and web report to a fully web-based publication and implemented a rolling release schedule.
Modernization. AIR created an automated table production system to update Digest tables that use selected data sources to increase efficiency and lay the foundation for a modernized future for other NCES products. In addition to streamlining the data preparation and data analysis processes for current tables, this system enabled the incorporation of historical tables to allow for more complete trend data. The system also facilitated the automated creation of interactive figures, such as those published in the Condition of Education. AIR updated 40 percent of Digest tables with this new method, bringing efficiency to table production and increasing the usability of Digest data just two years after adopting this system.
Introduction of new dashboard. AIR played a critical role in NCES’s inaugural release of the Digest State Dashboard. The dashboard is the first-ever Digest data tool and represents the first time Digest data, particularly state-level data, are visualized in an interactive dashboard format. Rather than having to find state-level data on various topics across many tables, users can now easily access these data in one place. AIR created the customizable figures to allow users to easily derive insights from the data that are tailored to their needs.