U.S. Education Statistics

The National Center for Education Statistics made the following points about U.S. education:

• The percentage of high school graduates that had completed advanced science coursework (i.e., at least one course classified as more challenging than general biology) increased from 35% in 1982 to 68% in 2004
• “The percentage of high school graduates who had completed courses in advanced mathematics (i.e., completed at least one course classified as more challenging than algebra II) increased from 26 percent in 1982 to 50 percent in 2004.”
• “The average reading scores at ages 9 and 13 were higher in 2004 than in 1971. The average score for 17-year-olds in 2004 was similar to that in 1971.”
• Between the school years of 1995-96 and 2005-06, “mathematics SAT scores increased by 10 points, while critical reading scores decreased by 2 points.”
• “Current expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools will be about $519 billion for the 2008-09 school year. The national average current expenditure per student is around $10,418, up from $9,154 in 2005-06.”
• “Status dropout rates are reported for 16- through 24-year-olds. The status dropout rate for this age group declined from 15 percent in 1972 to 9 percent in 2006. A decline was also seen between 2000 and 2006, the more recent years of this time span (11 to 9 percent).”
• “U.S. students scored lower in science literacy than their peers in 16 of the other 29 OECD jurisdictions and 6 of the 27 non-OECD jurisdictions.”
• “In 2006, the average U.S. score in mathematics literacy was 474 on a scale from 0 to 1,000, lower than the OECD average score of 498”
• “Among public high school students in the class of 2004-05, the averaged freshman graduation rate was 74.7 percent”

To read additional information, click on National Center for Education Statistics.