Number & types of public school agencies

Two more sets of data from the 2010-11 Common Core... (NCES)

Numbers and Types of Public Elementary and Secondary Local Education Agencies From the Common Core of Data: School Year 2010-11, presents findings on the numbers and types of public elementary and secondary local education agencies in the United States and the territories in the 2010-11 school year. Findings include:

• There were 17,911 operating local education agencies in the 2010-11 school year, and among those agencies, 13,592 were regular school districts.

• Twenty-six of the 13,592 active regular school districts enrolled 100,000 or more students.

• Approximately 953,000 students were enrolled in the 2,359 independent charter agencies, districts in which all schools were charter schools."

To view the full First Look report please visit
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2012326

Numbers and Types of Public Elementary and Secondary Schools From the Common Core of Data: School Year 2010–11, presents findings on the numbers and types of public elementary and secondary schools in the United States and the territories in the 2010-11 school year. Findings include:

• There were 98,817 operating public elementary/secondary schools in the 2010-11 school year. Of those schools, 88,929 were regular schools.

• By 2010-2011, charter schools had been established in 40 states and the District of Columbia. Charter schools enrolled about 1.8 million students.

• Across all regular public schools that had membership, the overall pupil/teacher ratio in 2010–11 was 15.7.

The Common Core of Data and this report are products of the National Center for Education Statistics at the Institute of Education Sciences.

To view the full First Look report please visit
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2012325


 

New data on school enrollment & staff counts

Public Elementary and Secondary School Student Enrollment and Staff Counts from the Common Core of Data: School Year 2010–11, presents findings on the numbers and types of public elementary and secondary state-level data in the United States and the territories in the 2010-11 school year. Findings include:

• Public elementary and secondary schools enrolled 49.5 million students.

• Public elementary and secondary schools and local education agencies employed a total of 6.2 million full-time-equivalent (FTE) staff.

• The student/teacher ratio (i.e., the number of students for every teacher FTE) in public schools is 16.0.

The Common Core of Data and this report are products of the National Center for Education Statistics at the Institute of Education Sciences.

To view the full First Look report please visit
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2012327

NCES post-secondary education data available

To improve postsecondary education data users’ access to data, NCES has released the College and Career Tables Library as part of DataLab – NCES’s postsecondary education data tool suite, which includes PowerStats and QuickStats.

The Tables Library lets you
• Browse 5,000+ tables from NCES’s postsecondary publications
• Search for tables by keywords; narrow search results by data source and publication year; and browse for tables by topic using explore topics

The tables also include link back to the original publications and you can download the files used to create the tables within PowerStats (for those based on datasets that are within PowerStats).

To access the Tables Library, please visit http://nces.ed.gov/datalab.

NCSER releases training videos for NLTS2 users...

The National Center for Special Education Research has released video training modules for the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS2). The NLTS2 data training modules are intended to be a resource to researchers who would like to use the NLTS2 dataset to conduct research addressing students with disabilities.
Links to all videos are here: http://ies.ed.gov/ncser/projects/nlts2/training.asp

New source of school district data

I will also add this to the Statistics tab of the Education research guide, although at this point, no Nevada data is included.
School Attendance Boundary Information System (SABINS)

Free aggregate census data and GIS-compatible boundary files for school attendance areas, or school catchment areas, for selected areas in the United States for the 2009-2010 school year. Includes:

• grade-specific school attendance areas for thousands of school districts
  in the United States
• 2010 Redistricting data for the school attendance areas
• crosswalks linking the school attendance areas to the National Center for Education Statistics' Common Core of Data

Developed by the Minnesota Population Center of the
University of Minnesota.

America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2011

The new report fro ChildStats is available here: http://childstats.gov/
This data-rich interagency report (including contributions from NCES) provides information on areas including health, education, economics, demographics and families.

2011 Condition of Education (NCES) now available as e-book

Download your own copy of this benchmark annual study which "presents 50 indicators on the status and condition of education... in five main areas: (1) participation in education; (2) learner outcomes; (3) student effort and educational progress; (4) the contexts of elementary and secondary education; and (5) the contexts of postsecondary education."
Free download available for all e-readers.  http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2011033

New enrollment figures for elementary/secondary schools

Some highlights from the new NCES report on the  2009-2010 year.


• About 49 million students attended 98,817 operating public elementary/secondary schools in the 2009–10 school year.

• Almost 1.6 million students were enrolled in 4,952 charter schools in 2009-10.

• Across all active regular public schools with students, the pupil/teacher ratio in 2009-10 was 16.1. Pupil/teacher ratio ranged from 10.9 in Vermont to 23.4 in Utah. [ Nevada's overall ratio was 19.4]

Full report is available here: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2011345

New issue of IES newsletter available

IES activities are reported through their newsletter. Several of these may be of interest...

The news includes articles about:

• A cooperative agreement with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching that involves the use of 90-day research cycles

• A 3-D project designed to enhance the social competencies of youth with Autism Spectrum Disorders

• Research findings from the National Center for Research on School Choice

• A new website application for accessing public and private school data

• Upcoming training opportunities

Click here to read the newsletter, http://ies.ed.gov/whatsnew/newsletters/

Visualizing Data with Gapminder

This remarkable website, Gapminder, developed in Sweden allows you to visualize data "some 500 indicators (relating to health, income, education, energy, the environment, technology, and more.)" from such standard sources as the United Nations, World Bank, and OECD. Watch this 4 minute video to get a sense of what it can do. http://www.gapminder.org/videos/200-years-that-changed-the-world-bbc/
There is definitely a learning curve (here is a page with a 2.5 minute tutorial to get started) but it's a rich resource for teaching and presenting the possibilities of data. 

HS Transcript data

Not sure if this data set will help with anyone's current and/or future research, but thought I would make the link available.
"The NAEP Data Explorer for the High School Transcript Study database now provides more information on the coursetaking patterns of high school graduates. Users can access the data and create statistical tables and charts on the types of courses students take, credits earned, grade point averages, the relationship between coursetaking patterns and achievement on NAEP assessments, and performance on other assessments."
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/hstsdata/

New IPEDS data released

Findings from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) fall 2009 data collection,  includes three survey components: institutional characteristics for 2009-10 (e.g.,  degrees offered, type of program, application information, tuition and other costs); the number and type of degrees conferred from July 2008 through June 2009; and 12-month enrollment data for the 2008-09 academic year.
Among other findings:

• An increasingly higher percentage of women are getting higher education degrees (2- and 4-year)
• Tuition has increase across the spectrum of higher education institutions (duh!)

To view the full report please visit: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2010161

Check out the new Almanac of Higher Education

The Chronicle's new Almanac is out. Go through the libraries' journal title search so you get access from off campus. Check out Nevada's demographic profile (right hand column).

Two new reports from College Board on college completion

Two new reports have been issued by the College Board on college completion. The first, "College Completion Agenda: 2010 Progress Report,"  provides data on issues related to college completion rates: associate and beyond,  internationally as well as state by state, breakdowns by age and race, etc...with 10 detailed recommendations. The second is a briefer set of policy recommendations, "The College Completion Agenda: State Policy Guide."

PowerStats: New analysis tool from NCES for Post-Secondary Education Data

"PowerStats, a data analysis tool, provides access to nine NCES postsecondary education datasets and the thousands of variables they contain. PowerStats includes the two most recent National Postsecondary Student Aid Studies (NPSAS), the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS), the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B), and the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF).

Users create tables and regressions with a visually intuitive drag and drop interface, receiving their results in a range of formats, including Excel and PDF. As the replacement to the NCES Data Analysis System (DAS), PowerStats provides helpful new features for users, including an improved capacity to search for variables, and saving recoded variables for future use. In addition, PowerStats allows users to build an online library of their work and to share their work with other PowerStats users."
Access PowerStats at http://nces.ed.gov/datalab

New report on public school revenues and expenditures: 2007-2008

"This brief publication contains basic revenue and expenditure data, by state, for public elementary and secondary education for school year 2007-08. It contains state-level data on revenues by source and expenditures by function, including expenditures per pupil."
The full report is linked here: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2010326

NCES Releases 2009 Digest of Education Statistics

"The "Digest of Education Statistics, 2009" is the 45th in a series of publications initiated in 1962. The Digest's primary purpose is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field of American education from prekindergarten through graduate school. The Digest contains data on a variety of topics, including the number of schools and colleges, teachers, enrollments, and graduates, in addition to educational attainment, finances, and federal funds for education, libraries, and international comparisons."
To view the full reports please visit:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2010013 (Digest) and
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2010014 (Mini-Digest)

National data on historic declines in support for higher ed

An article in Inside Higher Ed today includes a table with 1, 2, and 5 year figures for changes in levels of state funding (with and without stimulus monies) for all states.

Common Core Data for Elementary/Secondary Schools, 2007-08

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 2007-08 school year.

How to fix international higher education comparisons

We all sort of knew this--every country counts things differently in terms of reporting on their higher ed students. The study's author, however, not only points out the flaws but suggests ways to address them. The article describing the report was in today's Inside Higher Ed. Access to the report from the Institute for Higher Education Policy, “The Spaces Between Numbers: Getting International Data on Higher Education Straight,” is here.