Private School Universe Survey (PSS): Public-Use Data File User's Manual for School Year 2019-20. NCES 2022-021

The Private School Universe Survey (PSS) is conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education to collect basic information on American private elementary and secondary schools. PSS is currently designed to generate biennial data on the total number of private schools, teachers, and students, and to build a universe of private schools to serve as a sampling frame for NCES sample surveys. Data collected included enrollment by grade, enrollment by student race/ethnicity and sex, number of high school graduates, number of teachers, program emphasis, existence and type of kindergarten program, school religious orientation or affiliation, association membership, number of days in the school year and length of the school day, and whether the school had a library media center. This Manual contains sections covering frame creation, data collection procedures and response rates, data preparation, guide to the public-use data file and codebook, and user notes and cautions. Information in the chapters is supported by material in the appendices. Appendix A contains a copy of the 2019-20 PSS questionnaire, appendix B contains the list of variables and record layout of the public-use tab-delimited ASCII file, and appendix C contains the 2019-20 PSS public-use codebook.