AFSCME Information Highway

Source: School Transportation News, November 11, 2008

Among the statistics listed on the page:

• Nearly 500,000 yellow school buses provide transportation service daily nationwide.
• Approximately 26 million elementary and secondary school children ride school buses daily throughout the United States, twice a day.
• School buses travel approximately 4.4 billion miles each school year across the United States. To put this in perspective, the U.S. Department of Transportation publishes figures that show Americans drive nearly 3 trillion miles on U.S. highways each year.
• According to the National Safety Council, the national school bus accident rate is 0.01 per 100 million miles traveled, compared to 0.04 for trains, 0.06 for commercial aviation and 0.96 for other passenger vehicles.

Posted by Info Center at 10:50 AM in Education | Schools K-12 | Statistics | Permalink

Source: School Bus Fleet, October 2, 2008

As a result of the 480,000 school buses currently in operation in the U.S., more than 2.3 billion gallons of fuel are spared each year, resulting in a net savings of more than $8 billion in fuel costs, according to new statistics released by the American School Bus Council (ASBC).
Among the other statistics released by the ASBC:
• 17.3 million: Total number of private vehicles that would be needed to transport students currently riding on all school buses.
• 822 million gallons per year: Total fuel used by school buses.
• $3.4 billion per year: Total cost of fuel used by school buses.
• $131 per year: Cost of fuel per child transported by school bus.
• 3.1 billion gallons per year: Total fuel for cars replaced by buses
• $11.4 billion per year: Cost of fuel for cars replaced by school buses
• 62.4 billion: Total annual car mileage saved by students riding school buses.
• 346.6 million: Total daily car mileage saved by students riding school buses.
• 36: Average number of cars needed to transport students currently riding one school bus.
See also:
• National School Bus Fuel Data
• Fuel Calculator
• Statement of the American School Bus Council Regarding Impact of High Fuel Prices on School Districts Across the Country

Posted by Info Center at 5:02 PM in Education | Schools K-12 | Statistics | Transportation | Permalink

Source: School Nutrition Association, September 2008

From the press release:
The average cost to prepare a school lunch has increased 10% since the 2007-2008 school year, according to a report published today by the School Nutrition Association (SNA). Results from "Heats On: School Meals Under Financial Pressure" show the average cost rose from $2.63 to $2.90 for schools to prepare a nutritionally balanced school lunch that meets federal nutrition standards. Over the same timeframe, schools received only a 4.3% increase in the federal reimbursement for each free lunch provided to low income students. This funding gap could cost America's school nutrition programs a potential loss of at least $4.5 million per school day, based on 30 million school lunches provided daily.

To prevent a compromise of nutritional integrity, school districts have responded by raising lunch prices to an average of $2.08 up from $1.96 in the 2007-2008 school year. According to the report, 73% of school districts are increasing prices for students. Even with the increases, the cost of a school lunch remains lower than the average cost to prepare a lunch at home (according to meal cost comparisons by Dr. Alice Jo Rainville of Eastern Michigan University).

School nutrition programs strive to offer affordable, healthy meals to students who buy a school lunch each day and are also working to control labor, food and supply costs to keep student meal prices reasonable. But double-digit increases in food costs combined with increases in labor rates, benefit costs, transportation and fuel charges and high prices of nutritious items such as whole grains create a situation where the cost to prepare a meal exceeds both the amount charged for the meal and the federal reimbursement issued for free and reduced meals. SNA's report indicated that 88% of school nutrition programs found the National School Lunch Program reimbursement insufficient in covering the cost of producing a meal during the 2007-2008 school year. Given the rising costs for the upcoming school year, this figure is expected to increase in the coming months.
See also:
- Impact of Rising Food Costs
- Paring Food Costs: Comparing Apples to Apples

Posted by Info Center at 3:09 PM in Education | Schools K-12 | Permalink

Source: William J Hussar and Tabitha M. Bailey, National Center for Education Statistics, NCES 2008078, September 17, 2008

From the summary:
This publication provides projections for key education statistics. It includes statistics on enrollment, graduates, teachers, and expenditures in elementary and secondary schools, and enrollment and earned degrees conferred expenditures of degree-granting institutions. For the Nation, the tables, figures, and text contain data on enrollment, teachers, graduates, and expenditures for the past 14 years and projections to the year 2017. For the 50 States and the District of Columbia, the tables, figures, and text contain data on projections of public elementary and secondary enrollment and public high school graduates to the year 2017. In addition, the report includes a methodology section describing models and assumptions used to develop national and state-level projections.

Posted by Info Center at 4:54 PM in Education | Higher Education | Schools K-12 | Statistics | Permalink

Source: Rick Fry and Felisa Gonzales, Pew Hispanic Center, August 26, 2008

From the summary:
The number of Hispanic students in the nation's public schools nearly doubled from 1990 to 2006, accounting for 60% of the total growth in public school enrollments over that period. There are now approximately 10 million Hispanic students in the nation's public kindergartens and its elementary and high schools; they make up about one-in-five public school students in the United States. In 1990, just one-in-eight public school students were Hispanic.

Posted by Info Center at 6:02 PM in Education | Immigration | Schools K-12 | Statistics | Permalink

Source: Michele McNeil, Education Week, September 29, 2008

Seemingly arcane new federal rules about supplemental retirement plans have sparked a seismic shift in responsibility for school districts, thrusting them into the retirement business with new oversight--and burdens--involving their employees' 403(b) accounts.

Once merely paper-pushers between their employees and investment choices, district business officials must now vet and pick the investment firms that offer such plans, craft a highly technical document governing the 403(b) accounts, and assume responsibility for making sure employees seeking hardship withdrawals or loans from their accounts are following the rules.

Posted by Info Center at 5:38 PM in Benefits | Education | Retirement | Schools K-12 | Permalink

Source: Michele McNeil, Education Week, Vol. 28, Issue 06, September 24, 2008

Even as federal officials and members of Congress struggled this week over a rescue plan for troubled portions of the nation's financial sector, states and school districts braced for ripple effects that could further threaten their stressed budgets.

The situation could have its biggest long-term impact on districts' capital projects, as the upheaval in the credit and stock markets threatens to drive up the cost of borrowing money.

Posted by Info Center at 5:35 PM in Education | Schools K-12 | State & Local Finance | Permalink

Source: Ethan Pollack, Economic Policy Institute, Economic Snapshot, September 3, 2008

As the kids head back to school, a new analysis shows that school buildings are less ready to receive them than in the past. Get the fact at a glance in this week's Economic Snapshot.

Posted by Info Center at 6:03 PM in Education | Schools K-12 | Permalink

Source: Empire Center, May 01, 2008

School districts across New York State will increase their per-pupil spending next year by nearly one and a half times the current rate of inflation -- despite falling real estate values and clear signs of an economic slowdown -- according to an analysis issued today by the Empire Center for New York State Policy.

Posted by Info Center at 6:07 PM in Education | Schools K-12 | Permalink

Source: Michele McNeil, Education Week, August 25, 2008

These hard-to-grasp dollar amounts are forcing real cuts in K-12 education at a time when the cost of fueling buses and providing school lunches is increasing and the demands of the federal No Child Left Behind Act still loom large over states and districts.

But that may be a difficult task in the dozen states--including Alabama, Kentucky, Rhode Island, and Nevada--that have made targeted cuts to certain education programs, according to a June report by the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures.

Posted by Info Center at 3:12 PM in Early Childhood Education | Education | Schools K-12 | State & Local Finance | Permalink

Source: Pollution Online, August 19, 2008

One in three U.S. public schools are in the "air pollution danger zone," according to new research from the University of Cincinnati (UC).

UC researchers have found that more than 30 percent of American public schools are within 400 meters, or a quarter mile, of major highways that consistently serve as main truck and traffic routes.

Research has shown that proximity to major highways--and thus environmental pollutants, such as aerosolizing diesel exhaust particles--can leave school-age children more susceptible to respiratory diseases later in life.

Posted by Info Center at 11:05 AM in Early Childhood Education | Education | Environment | Schools K-12 | Transportation | Permalink

Source: Katherine Ralston, Constance Newman, Annette Clauson, Joanne Guthrie, and Jean Buzby, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service Economic Research Report No. (ERR-61), July 2008

From an overview:
The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) is the Nation's second largest food and nutrition assistance program. In 2006, it operated in over 101,000 public and nonprofit private schools and provided over 28 million low-cost or free lunches to children on a typical school day at a Federal cost of $8 billion for the year. This report provides background information on the NSLP, including historical trends and participant characteristics. It also addresses steps being taken to meet challenges facing administrators of the program, including tradeoffs between nutritional quality of foods served, costs, and participation, as well as between program access and program integrity.
See also:
■ Summary

Posted by Info Center at 1:50 PM in Education | Schools K-12 | Statistics | Permalink

Source: American Association of School Administrators, 2008

From the press release:
Rising fuel and energy costs are taking a toll on school system budgets nationwide, according to the results of a new survey released today by the American Association of School Administrators. The eight-question AASA Fuel and Energy Snapshot Survey asked school superintendents about the effect of rising fuel and energy costs on their school districts. Ninety-nine percent of respondents reported these rising costs are having an impact on their school systems. Further, they reported that conserving energy, cutting back on student field trips and consolidating bus routes are among the top steps districts are taking to minimize the impact of rising fuel and energy costs. Meanwhile, few states are stepping forward to assist school systems struggling to meet escalating these rising costs.
See also:
■ Survey Results
■ Charts and Graphs
■ Snapshot of Superintendents' Responses

Posted by Info Center at 1:38 PM in Education | Finance | Schools K-12 | Permalink

Source: Lei Zhou, National Center for Education Statistics, July 2008

From the description:
This brief publication contains data on revenues and expenditures per pupil made by school districts for school year 2005-06. Median per pupil revenue and expenditure data are reported by state, as well as values at the 5th and 95th percentiles. Data for charter schools are reported separately. There are also discussions on the different types of school districts, and other resources that may be helpful in analyzing school district level data. Revenues and expenditures for the 100 largest school districts are included, as well as federal revenues by program. For total revenues and expenditures for public education made by states and the nation, readers should refer to the state-level "Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary Education: School Year 2005-06″ (NCES 2008-328)

Posted by Info Center at 1:25 PM in Education | Schools K-12 | Statistics | Permalink

Source: Kathy Christie, Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 89 no. 10, June 2008

The headlines are daunting. Plunging home values, skyrocketing fuel costs, declining state revenues, and a multitude of other budget worries add up to nightmares for state budget officials and school business directors. Even the most conservative observers will admit that budget cuts in most districts go beyond trimming fat and are cutting deep into the meat.

Posted by Info Center at 6:11 PM in Early Childhood Education | Education | Higher Education | Schools K-12 | Permalink

Source: Kevin Carey, Education Sector, April 14, 2008 (Originally published on Inside Higher Ed.)

In 1971, a lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court that would have a profound impact on the way American schools are funded. Serrano v. Priest was the first in a wave of elementary and secondary school finance cases that would touch nearly every state in the nation and continues to this day.

Existing funding regimes have been torn down, constitutional crises provoked, and billions of dollars spent in the name of achieving financial equity between school districts that serve the rich and the poor.

Nothing similar has ever happened in higher education. Desegregation lawsuits have brought some increased equity, but states have never had to defend the fairness of their higher education financing systems in court--at least not on grounds of economic discrimination as opposed to racial bias.

Posted by Info Center at 6:01 PM in Education | Higher Education | Schools K-12 | State & Local Finance | Permalink

Source: Alan S. Bigger and Jeff Campbell, APPA, 2008
(subscription required)

From the abstract:
The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a direct corrrelation between cleanliness and the resulting academic grade(s) of students. In 1992, APPA published the first edition of Custodial Staffing Guidelines for Educational Facilities; the second edition was published in 1998. This seminal document set the precedent for correlating levels of productivity and cleaning of facilities and has been used as justification for appropriate staffing levels at institutions. In addition, ISSA has long established cleaning times and guidelines that also address productivity issues.

However, such data is now being brought into question as performance indicators are being used to address specific outcomes of maintenance programs. The principal investigators led a team of researchers representing APPA and ISSA to collect data, review and research relevant literature, and determine whether levels of staffing and cleaning have an affect on the academic achievement of students.
See also:
Press release

Posted by Info Center at 11:13 AM in Education | Higher Education | Schools K-12 | Permalink

Source: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Education and Labor, Press release, July 9, 2008

With Americans already feeling the strain of higher grocery costs, soaring food prices are making it more difficult for schools, child care programs, and summer food service programs to provide healthy, low-cost meals for children, witnesses told the House Education and Labor Committee today. Today's hearing was the first held by Congress to examine how rising food costs are affecting U.S. child nutrition programs and the millions of families who rely on them.

According to preliminary results of a new survey unveiled by the School Nutrition Association at the hearing, to help cope with higher food costs in the coming year, 75 percent of school nutrition directors plan to increase school meal prices for students, and 62 percent plan to reduce staff. In addition, 69 percent of the survey's respondents reported they will have to dip into their "rainy day funds" intended for capital improvement projects.
See also:
• Testimonies (PDFs) and archived webcast

Posted by Info Center at 5:51 PM in Child Care Workers | Children | Early Childhood Education | Economy | Education | Schools K-12 | Permalink

Source: James E. Rydeen, American School and University, June 1, 2008

1950s-'60s schools: Obsolescence or longevity?

Forty-three percent of existing public schools were built in the 1950s-'60s era. This era seems to have gained the reputation of cheap, energy-inefficient buildings that were not intended to last more than 30 years.

A study at one school district estimated it would cost $2.1 billion to fix its aging buildings. Many buildings were well-kept and clean, but their mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems were old and inefficient; the food-service equipment needed replacing; and the facilities did not comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Most of the buildings are only 30 to 50 years old and are showing signs of water damage, and wear and tear.

Experience has proven that public schools must be designed for long-term use -- much longer than 30 years.

Many institutions keep up with most of their annual facility maintenance, but not with replacing major systems and equipment because annual budgets cannot cover the costs. Avoiding such dilemmas requires planning, scheduling and budgeting for the eventual upgrades.

Posted by Info Center at 12:38 PM in Education | Higher Education | Infrastructure | Schools K-12 | Permalink

Source: National Center for Education Statistics, Statistical Analysis Report, NCES 2008-339, June 2008

From the summary:
This annual report provides basic information from the Common Core of Data about the nation's largest public school districts in the 2005-06 school year. The data include such characteristics as the numbers of students and teachers, number of high school completers and the averaged freshman graduation rate, and revenues and expenditures. Findings include: In 2005-06, these 100 largest districts enrolled 23 percent of all public school students, and employed 22 percent of all public school teachers. The districts produced 20 percent of all high school completers (both diploma and other completion credential recipients) in 2004-05. Across the districts, the averaged freshman graduation rate was 69.5 percent. Three states -- California, Florida, and Texas -- accounted for almost half of the 100 largest public school districts. Current per-pupil expenditures in fiscal year 2003 ranged from a low of $5,104 in the Puerto Rico School District to a high of $18,878 in the District of Columbia Public School District.

Posted by Info Center at 5:43 PM in Education | Schools K-12 | Statistics | Permalink

Source: Phyllis McClure, Ross Wiener, Marguerite Roza, Matt Hill, Center for American Progress, June 10, 2008

A new report addresses ways in which local school district funding practices hurt disadvantaged students and what federal policy can do about it.

Posted by Info Center at 3:28 PM in Discrimination | Education | Schools K-12 | Permalink

Source: National Center for Education Statistics

This website is an integrated collection of the indicators and analyses published in The Condition of Education 2000-2008. Some indicators may have been updated since they appeared in print.

Posted by William at 2:02 PM in Education | Schools K-12 | Statistics | Permalink

Source: Communities for Quality Education, 2008

From the press release:
A new report from Communities for Quality Education (CQE) analyzes State of the State gubernatorial addresses between 2004-2008 and highlights specific education policy trends. The report shows that between 2004 and 2007, every governor who delivered a State of the State address stressed the importance of education to economic growth. In fact, no issue surrounding education has been focused on as much by governors in their State of the State addresses as the link between education and economic prosperity.
See also:
• Governors' Statements

Posted by Info Center at 2:04 PM in Early Childhood Education | Economy | Education | Higher Education | Schools K-12 | Permalink

Source: Kevin Carey and Marguerite Roza, Education Sector Reports, May 15, 2008

From the summary:
Federal, state, and local policies designed to distribute education funds systematically provide more money to higher-income students and wealthier schools.
See also:
Education Finance

Posted by Info Center at 1:12 PM in Education | Finance | Schools K-12 | Permalink

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division,
Education & Social Stratification Branch, May 08, 2008

From the press release:
A national-level update of characteristics of the nation's more than 75 million students. Eight tables include number of students by attributes such as age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, family income, type of college and vocational course enrollment. This Internet-only release comes from data collected each October as part of the Current Population Survey. The full report with analysis of the details is expected later this summer.

Posted by Info Center at 2:14 PM in Early Childhood Education | Education | Higher Education | Schools K-12 | Statistics | Permalink

Source: Ann Duffett, Steve Farkas, Andrew J. Rotherham, Elena Silva, Education Sector, May 2008

From the summary:
American public education is in the midst of intense change, and teachers, in particular, are facing pressure to produce better outcomes for students. As policymakers, teachers unions, and other stakeholders react to changing demands on the nation's public education system, there remains considerable debate about what teachers think and what they want. Too often assumptions define the conversation rather than actual evidence of teachers' views. In an effort to facilitate and inform this conversation, Education Sector and the FDR Group surveyed 1,010 K-12 public school teachers about their views on the teaching profession, teachers unions, and a host of reforms aimed at improving teacher quality.

Posted by Info Center at 10:48 AM in Education | Schools K-12 | Permalink

Source: Mary Filardo, EPI Briefing Paper, April 29, 2008

From the summary:
The nation's 97,000 public school buildings comprise an estimated 6.6 billion square feet of space on over 1 million acres of land. And while states and local communities invested over $500 billion in K-12 school building improvements from 1995 to 2004, considerable additional investments are needed to ensure that the nation's public schools are healthy, safe, environmentally sound, and built and maintained to support a high-quality education.

Today, many of the nation's schools face the combined challenges of deteriorating conditions, out-of date design, and changing utilization pressures (including intense overcrowding in some communities and rapidly declining enrollments in others). These combined deficiencies impair the quality of teaching and learning and contribute to health and safety problems for staff and students. Building design and facility conditions have also been associated with teacher motivation and student achievement.
See also:
Press release

Posted by Info Center at 9:44 AM in Economy | Education | Environment | Infrastructure | Schools K-12 | Permalink

Source: Gerg Anrig, The Washington Monthly, April 2008

...But in recent months, almost unnoticed by the mainstream media, the school voucher movement has abruptly stalled. Some stalwart advocates of vouchers have either repudiated the idea entirely or considerably tempered their enthusiasm for it. Exhibit A is "School Choice Isn't Enough," an article in the winter 2008 City Journal (the quarterly published by the conservative Manhattan Institute) written by the former voucher proponent Sol Stern. Acknowledging that voucher programs for poor children had "hit a wall," Stern concluded: "Education reformers ought to resist unreflective support for elegant-sounding theories, derived from the study of economic activity, that don't produce verifiable results in the classroom." His conversion has triggered an intense debate in conservative circles. The center-right education scholar Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and a longtime critic of public school bureaucracies and teachers unions, told the New York Sun that he was sympathetic to Stern's argument. In his newly published memoirs, Finn also writes of his increasing skepticism that "the market's invisible hand" produces improved performance on its own. Howard Fuller, an African American who was the superintendent of schools in Milwaukee when the voucher program was launched there, and who received substantial support from the Bradley Foundation and other conservative institutions over the years, has conceded, "It hasn't worked like we thought it would in theory." From all appearances, then, the voucher movement may not long outlive its founder, Friedman, or its most vigorous advocate and funder, Michael Joyce, who both died in 2006. How did one of the conservative policy world's most cherished causes crumble so quickly?

Full text

Posted by William at 9:40 AM in Education | Schools K-12 | Permalink

Source: U.S. Department of Education

From news release:
In 1983, the national report, A Nation At Risk, delivered a wake up call for our education system. It described stark realities like a significant number of functionally illiterate high schoolers, plummeting student performance, and international competitors breathing down our necks. It was a warning, a reproach, and a call to arms.

Fast forward twenty-five years to 2008. What has changed?

In some ways, we haven't fully learned the lessons of A Nation at Risk, and continue to deal with the consequences. Today, half of all minority students fail to graduate from high school on time. But there's an upside. A Nation At Risk inspired some state-level pioneers to think about standards and accountability in education, and put them into practice. This, in turn, led to the landmark No Child Left Behind Act. Now, across the nation, we're finally measuring the progress of students of every race and income level, finally holding ourselves accountable for their performance, and finally producing and sharing data to determine what works.

Accurate, honest information is helping to show us the way forward, but it's also revealing disturbing realities--like grave inequities between students of different races and income levels. As a result, the accountability movement to raise student achievement has reached a tipping point: will we hide from tough problems or redouble our efforts to help every student achieve their potential?

Full Report (PDF; 941 KB)

The 1983 report (PDF)

Posted by William at 8:32 AM in Education | Schools K-12 | Permalink

Source: America's Promise Alliance

Graduation rates have become a prominent feature in the landscape of high school reform and within the larger world of educational policy. Studies conducted over the past several years have repeatedly demonstrated that far fewer American students are completing high school with diplomas than had previously been realized. Whereas the conventional wisdom had long placed the graduation rate around 85 percent, a growing consensus has emerged that only about seven in 10 students are actually successfully finishing high school. Graduation rates are even lower among certain student populations, particularly racial and ethnic minorities and males.

That same conventional wisdom also suggests that the type of community in which a student lives and attends school will exert a strong and pervasive influence on a variety of educational outcomes. This connection between place and performance applies to both the experiences of individual students and the collective performance of schools and school systems. Striking differences between schools situated in urban and suburban environments, for instance, have frequently been documented in the area of tested achievement. An analysis by the EPE Research Center also shows that high school graduation rates are 15 percentage points lower in the nation's urban schools when compared with those located in the suburbs. Despite the acknowledged importance of such contextual factors, apart from attention to broad national-level patterns, there has been limited detailed investigation into the connection between where a young person lives and his or her chances of graduating from high school.

This report takes a geographically-informed approach to the issue of high school completion. Specifically, we examine graduation rates in the school districts serving the nation's 50 most-populous cities as well as the larger metropolitan areas in which they are situated. Results show that graduation rates are considerably lower in the nation's largest cities than they are in the average urban locale. Further, extreme disparities emerge in a number of the country's largest metropolitan areas, where students served by suburban systems may be twice as likely as their urban peers to graduate from high school.

Full report (PDF; 1.8 MB)

Posted by William at 10:37 AM in Education | Schools K-12 | Permalink