Per Pupil Spending Varies Heavily Across the United States

Census Bureau Releases New Public Education Finance Data June 2, 2015 — Per pupil spending for the nation was $10,700 during fiscal year 2013, a 0.9 percent increase from 2012, but varied heavily among states with a high of $19,818 in New York and a low of $6,555 in Utah.  Today’s findings come from Public Education Finances: 2013, which provides figures on revenues, expenditures, debt and assets (cash and security holdings) for the nation’s elementary and secondary public school systems. The report and tables, released annually, include detailed statistics on spending — such as instruction, student transportation, salaries and employee benefits — at the national, state and school district levels.

How kicking a trash can became criminal for a 6th grader: Where does your state rank in sending students to cops, courts?

The U.S. Department of Education data analyzed by the Center for Public Integrity show that Virginia schools in a single year referred students to law enforcement agencies at a rate nearly three times the national rate. Virginia’s referral rate: about 16 for every 1,000 students, compared to a national rate of six referrals for every 1,000 students. In Virginia, some of the individual schools with highest rates of referral — in one case 228 per 1,000 — were middle schools, whose students are usually from 11 to 14 years old.

The data shows that in most states black, Latino and special-needs (disabled) students get referred to police and courts disproportionately. The volume of referrals from schools is fueling arguments that zero tolerance policies and school policing are creating a “school-to-prison pipeline” by criminalizing behavior better dealt with outside courts. The Center for Public Integrity ranked states by their rate of referral for every 1,000 students.

More from the Center for Public Integrity.

College Enrollment and Work Activity of 2012 High School Graduates

In October 2012, 66.2 percent of 2012 high school graduates were enrolled in colleges or universities, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Recent high school graduates not enrolled in college in October 2012 were more likely than enrolled graduates to be working or looking for work (69.6 percent compared with 38.2 percent)

More HERE.

New Analyses of Census Data Examine Nation’s 65+ Labor Force, Working Students, Changes in Self-Employment

Three new American Community Survey briefs released today from the U.S. Census Bureau focus on individuals 65 and older in the labor force, students who are working or have worked in the past year, and the self-employed.

The percentage of people 65 and older in the labor force increased from 12.1 percent in 1990 to 16.1 percent in 2010. The increase was greater for women.

“As with all age groups, the increase in labor force participation of women has been a driving factor for this overall trend,” said Braedyn Kromer, an analyst in the Census Bureau’s Labor Force Statistics Branch.

Between 1990 and 2010, women 65 and older experienced a 4.1 percentage point increase in labor force participation, while women 16 to 64 experienced a 1.9 percentage point increase. This compares with a 3.2 percentage point increase in the labor force participation rate for men 65 and older and a 5.2 percentage point decline in the participation rate for men 16 to 64.

These statistics are part of a series of short, topic-based briefs produced to highlight results from the 2011 American Community Survey. The three briefs released are Labor Force Participation and Work Status of People 65 Years and Older, and School Enrollment and Work Status: 2011, and Changes in Self-Employment: 2010 to 2011.

“The American Community Survey allows us to measure important demographic characteristics of the nation's labor force and helps identify the impacts of changes in the labor market,” said Jennifer Cheeseman Day, assistant division chief for employment characteristics in the Census Bureau's Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division.

The School Enrollment and Work Status: 2011 brief highlights statistics on school enrollment and examines the proportion of students who worked and the amount of time they worked over the previous year. For example, the majority of undergraduate college students, 72 percent, worked during the year. Some other highlights included in the brief are:

--In 2011, 20 percent of college undergraduate students worked full-time, year-round.
--Almost half of graduate students worked full-time, year-round.
--The majority of graduate students, 82 percent, worked at least part-time during the year.

The Changes in Self-Employment: 2010 to 2011 brief examines changes in self-employment from 2010 to 2011 for the United States, the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Self-employment refers to individuals working in their own incorporated or nonincorporated businesses. Some highlights included in the brief are:

--Incorporated self-employment fell as a share of total employment nationally and in 13 states between 2010 and 2011. It increased in one state and was essentially unchanged in 36 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
--From 2010 to 2011, the share of nonincorporated self-employment of total employment decreased nationally and in five states (Colorado, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas) and the District of Columbia. It increased in one state and Puerto Rico and was essentially unchanged in 44 states.
--In general, incorporated self-employed workers were more likely to work in management and professional occupations and had higher employment outcomes in 2011 than nonincorporated self-employed workers. The higher employment outcomes show that they were more likely to work full-time, year-round, have health insurance and earned higher incomes.

The American Community Survey provides a wide range of important statistics about people and housing for every community across the nation. The results are used by everyone from town and city planners to retailers and homebuilders. The survey is the only source of local estimates for most of the 40 topics it covers, such as education, occupation, language, ancestry and housing costs for even the smallest communities. Ever since Thomas Jefferson directed the first census in 1790, the census has collected detailed characteristics about our nation's people. Questions about jobs and the economy were added 20 years later under James Madison, who said such information would allow Congress to "adapt the public measures to the particular circumstances of the community," and over the decades, allow America "an opportunity of marking the progress of the society."

First-Year Undergraduate Remedial Coursetaking

A primary goal of the U.S. Department of Education’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Blueprint for Reform is to improve the college readiness of high school graduates. College readiness is a complex benchmark and has been measured in several ways, including transcript analysis and standardized test scores. One such measure, and the focus of this Statistics in Brief, is remedial coursework enrollment.

Consistent with earlier National Center for Education Statistics publications, this brief defines remedial courses as courses for students lacking skills necessary to perform college-level work at the degree of rigor required by the institution. At the start of their college careers, students who are not sufficiently prepared to complete entry-level courses are often encouraged or required to take developmental or remedial courses. Results from previous surveys conducted by the NCES that collected data on the percentage of students enrolled in remedial coursework found that 28 percent of first-year students who entered 2- or 4-year degree-granting postsecondary institutions were enrolled in remedial courses in both 1995 and 2000.

Student Debt and the Class of 2010

From the Institute for College Access & Success [PDF]

College seniors who graduated with student loans in 2010 owed an average of $25,250, up five percent from the previous year, according to a new report from the Project on Student Debt at the Institute for College Access & Success. The Class of 2010 also faced the highest unemployment levels for new college graduates in recent history: 9.1 percent.

Crossing the Line: Sexual Harassment at School

The American Association of University Women (AAUW) released Crossing the Line: Sexual Harassment at School, the most comprehensive, nationally representative research conducted in the past 10 years on sexual harassment in middle and high schools. Sexual harassment pervades the lives of students in grades 7–12.

Public School Student Enrollment, Graduates and Dropouts

Public Elementary and Secondary School Student Enrollment and Staff From the Common Core of Data: School Year 2009-10

This First Look presents national and state level data on student enrollment by grade and by race/ethnicity within grade, the numbers of teachers and other education staff, and several student/staff ratios for the 2009-10 school year.


Public School Graduates and Dropouts from the Common Core of Data: School Year 2008–09

This report presents findings associated with public high school graduation and event dropout counts for the 2008–09 school year. These data were collected as part of the Common Core of Data Survey Collection, a universe collection of public schools operating in the United States and associated other jurisdictions.

Top Languages Spoken by English Language Learners

Source: Migration Policy Institute

While ELL students nationwide speak more than 150 languages, Spanish far outranks others as the most common first -- or home -- language. At the same time, although it is spoken in 73 percent of ELL students’ homes, Spanish is not the top language spoken by ELLs in every state.

New York 229,260

Spanish 146,702
Undetermined 12,821
Chinese 6,974
Arabic 5,915
Bengali 5,048

Percent ELL Students Speaking the Top Language 64.0
Percent of ELL Students Speaking the Top Five Languages 77.4

Planning for College Financially

Data Detective Dale pointed this out to me. He thinks this is important to share, and I quite concur. Moreover, this being the graduation season, it’s timely !

He has discovered that many parents are quite surprised about how much they are expected to contribute to their kids’ college costs. Dale writes, "This is referred to as their Expected Family Contribution (EFC). What typically happens is that parents bumble along (I know we did) until their child is a junior in HS and then they go through the process of applying to colleges and for financial aid at the FAFSA.gov website when WHAM >>>> - they get a reality check upside the head when it comes to how much the federal government thinks THEY can contribute toward attending school." I can imagine there are MANY parents sitting in financial aid offices with tears in their eyes over this.

What can the schools or government do to reduce this sticker shock when it comes to EFCs? Dale notes, "Figuring out financial aid has always been a bit of a 'black box'. You put a bunch of numbers in and out comes your EFC with no understanding of what it is or how it comes about.

"Lo and behold, there is now a way to determine your EFC at the FAFSA website. It is called fafsa4caster. Basically you can punch in info for the current year as though your child were applying to a college right now, and get an EFC figured out for you. It takes maybe 15 minutes to do and requires you to answer a TON of questions, including tax and investment questions. (I estimated some just playing around with the website to see how it works, you could do the same if you wanted to get a ballpark EFC for your family.)

"Regardless, it is exactly what I have always maintained people should be able to do. Even better, it allows people to see their EFC right now, even if their kids are young and not even in kindergarten, let alone high school or college. So my challenge to everyone is to try it, and be prepared to hear the collective gasps of parents or perspective parents around the web as they see what their EFC actually is !

"OK, go to http://www.fafsa4caster.ed.gov/F4CApp/index/index.jsf and pick option "B" to get started. Remember, you’ll need some basics like your adjusted gross income and how much you paid in taxes last year. Having other info, like any 529 Education account balances, or 401K contributions is also good to have. But even in the worst case, you can just punch in some estimates to see what ballpark your EFC will fall in."

Dale believes that putting this information on this site "could help people reassess what they are doing to prepare for their kids' futures!"

Beloit College Mindset List for the entering college class of 2013

"This is the 12th year that Beloit College has assembled these observations that help to identify the experiences that have shaped the lives—and formed the mindset—of students starting their post-secondary education this fall.

"The Mindset List is not a chronological listing of things that happened in 1991, the year they were born. It is instead an effort to identify the worldview of 18 year-olds in the fall of 2009. Of course, our students come from many backgrounds and different traditions and these generalizations may not apply to all. The list identifies the experiences and event horizons of students and is not meant to reflect on their preparatory education.

"It is also not deliberately designed to make readers feel really old!"
Ah, but it DOES!