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The National Center for Education Statistic’s (NCES) report The Condition of Education 2010 is a Congressionally mandated report on the status of education in the United States. It covers preK education through adult education and uses 49 indicators that point to information on enrollment trends, demographics and outcomes, to determine the strength and weakness of education in the U.S.
The 2010 report forecasts that the public school enrollment will go from 49 million in 2008, to an estimated 52 million by 2019, with most of that growth in the South. There are now more students who attend charter schools and high-poverty schools then the previous decade. One in six students in the United States attends a high-poverty school which is defined as a school in which 75% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.
Each year The Condition of Education does a special analysis on a particular topic. The following is a list of special analysis for the past five years (Links to all these special reports are included in the 2010 report):
- 2009 International Assessments
- 2008 Community Colleges
- 2007 High School Coursetaking
- 2006 U.S. Student and Adult Performance on International Assessments of Educational Achievement
- 2005 Mobility in the Teacher Workforce
In 2010 the special analysis for The Condition s of Education is about high-poverty public schools. Some of the findings included in their report on high-poverty public schools include:
- “In 2007-2008, about 20 percent of all elementary students and 9 percent of secondary school students attended high-poverty school, compared with 15 percent and 5 percent respectively in 1999-2000.
- The reading achievement gap between low- and high-poverty 8th grade students was 34 points in 2009 and the mathematics achievement gap was 38 points.
- In 2007-8, about 28 percent of high school graduates from high-poverty school attended 4-year institutions after graduation, compared with 52 percent of high school graduates from low-poverty schools, based on reports from school administrators.”
The special analysis on high poverty schools discussed some of the demographics of poverty:
- During the years 2007-8 there were 16,122 schools that were classified as high-poverty schools which means that between 76 and 100 percent of the students were eligible for free or reduced-price meals.
- The percentage of high-poverty school increased from 12 percent in 1999-2000 to 17 percent in 2007-8.
- Cities tended to have greater percentages of high-poverty schools.
- In 2007-8, about 40 percent of elementary schools were high-poverty schools.
- In 2007-8, approximately 24 percent of all public elementary schools in both the South and the West were high-poverty schools, compared with 16 percent of the Northeast and 12 percent in the Midwest.
During 2007-8 the highest percentage of high-poverty elementary schools were
- Mississippi (53 percent)
- Louisiana (52 percent
- New Mexico (46 percent)
- District of Columbia (37 percent)
- California (34 percent)
During the same period of time secondary schools with high-poverty schools included:
- 12 percent of public schools in the West
- 11 percent of schools in the Northeast
- 11 percent of schools in the South
- 5 percent of schools in the Midwest
The states with the highest percentages of high-poverty secondary schools in 2007-8 were:
- Mississippi (43 percent)
- New Mexico (34 percent)
- Louisiana (27 percent)
- New York (21 percent)
As the report points out: “On average, students from high-poverty schools did not perform as well on National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading, mathematics, music, and art assessments as students from low-poverty schools.”
Needless to say the data given in The Condition of Education was largely from 2007-8. Given the economic downturn the number of students qualifying for free and reduced lunch has likely increased.
