Fast Response Survey System (FRSS): Arts Education Surveys of Secondary School Teachers, 2009-2010

The Fast Response Survey System (FRSS) was established in 1975 by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), United States Department of Education. FRSS is designed to collect issue-oriented data within a relatively short time frame. FRSS collects data from state education agencies, local education agencies, public and private elementary and secondary schools, public school teachers, and public libraries. To ensure minimal burden on respondents, the surveys are generally limited to three pages of questions, with a response burden of about 30 minutes per respondent. Sample sizes are relatively small (usually about 1,000 to 1,500 respondents per survey) so that data collection can be completed quickly. Data are weighted to produce national estimates of the sampled education sector. The sample size is large enough to permit limited breakouts by classification variables. However, as the number of categories within the classification variables increases, the sample size within categories decreases, which results in larger sampling errors for the breakouts by classification variables.

The Arts Education Surveys of Secondary School Teachers provide national estimates on arts education and arts instructors in public secondary schools during the 2009-10 school year. This data collection contains two surveys that provide information about music specialists and visual arts specialists. These two surveys are part of a set of seven surveys that collected data on arts education during the 2009-10 school year. In addition to these secondary teacher surveys, the set includes a survey of elementary school principals, a survey of secondary school principals, and three elementary teacher-level surveys. A stratified sample design was used to select music specialists and visual arts specialists for the Arts Education Surveys of Secondary School Teachers. Data collection was conducted September 2009 through July 2010. Altogether, 1,065 eligible music specialists and 1,046 eligible visual arts specialists completed the surveys by web, mail, fax, or telephone.

The secondary teacher surveys collected data on the availability of curriculum-based arts education activities outside of regular school hours; teaching load of music and visual arts specialists in secondary schools; teacher participation in various professional development activities and the perceived impact of such participation on teaching; and teachers' use of formal methods of assessment of students' progress and achievement in the arts. Furthermore, teachers were also asked to provide administrative information such as school level, school enrollment size, school community type, and percent of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.