By Peggy Carr, Acting Commissioner of NCES
I am pleased to announce the release of the 2017 Condition of Education, a Congressionally-mandated annual report summarizing the latest data on education in the United States. This report is designed to help policymakers and the public monitor educational progress. This year’s report includes 50 indicators on topics ranging from prekindergarten through postsecondary education, as well as labor force outcomes and international comparisons.
The Condition includes an At a Glance section, which allows readers to quickly make comparisons within and across indicators, and a Highlights section, which captures a key finding or set of findings from each indicator. The report contains a Reader’s Guide, Glossary, and a Guide to Data Sources that provide additional information to help place the indicators in context. In addition, each indicator references the data tables that were used to produce the indicator, most of which are on the Digest of Education Statistics website.
In addition to the regularly-updated annual indicators, this year’s report highlights innovative data collections and analyses from across the Center with a series of spotlight indicators. Selected findings include:
- Student risk factors (poverty and low parent educational attainment) at kindergarten entry are associated with lower academic achievement in kindergarten through grade 3;
- 2.5 percent of students in U.S. public elementary and secondary schools were reported as homeless in 2014-15. The percentage of students reported as homeless ranged from 2.0 percent in suburban school districts to 2.4 percent in rural districts, 2.6 percent in town districts, and 3.7 percent in city districts;
- Among first-time college students in 2011-12, the percentage of students who were still enrolled or had graduated after 3 years was higher for students who began at 4-year institutions (80 percent) than for those who began at 2-year institutions (57 percent); and
- 16 percent of 25- to 64-year-olds who had not completed high school had one or more disabilities in 2015, compared to 4 percent of those who had completed a bachelor’s degree and 3 percent of those who had completed a master’s or higher degree. Adults with disabilities were far less likely to be employed and far more likely to not be in the labor force compared to their peers without disabilities. Among those who had obtained higher levels of education, the differences between adults with and without disabilities were smaller.
In addition, two indicators provide insights from the Center’s recent work on technology in education. The first previews key findings from the Center’s upcoming report, Student Access to Digital Learning Resources Outside of the Classroom. For example, the percent of students who use the Internet at home varied by parental education level in 2015, ranging from 42 percent for children whose parents had not completed high school to 71 percent for those whose parents had completed a bachelor’s or higher degree. The second shows that in 2014 female students scored higher than male students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress’s 8th-grade Technology and Engineering Literacy assessment.
As new data are released, indicators will be updated and made available on the Condition of Education website. In addition, the Center produces a wide range of reports and datasets designed to help inform policymakers and the public. For more information on our latest activities and releases, please visit us online or follow us on Twitter and Facebook. You can also watch the video below for more information on the Condition of Education report.