Public Education Primer

Posted by on February 19, 2012

Public education matters, whether you’re a student, parent, teacher, administrator, employer, or taxpayer.
Although you undoubtedly know something about public education, you may be unaware of important facts
about the U.S. educational system or may be surprised to learn how things have changed in recent years.

This edition of A Public Education Primer updates and expands on the version originally published by the Center on Education Policy in 2006. Like the first publication, this revised edition pulls together
recent data about students, teachers, school districts, schools, and other aspects of elementary and secondary education in the U.S. Included are facts and figures on the distribution of students, student
demographics, educational entities and their responsibilities, funding, student achievement, teachers,
and other school services.

As much as possible, the data compiled here come from the federal government—primarily the
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the data-gathering arm of the U.S. Department of
Education. Where NCES data are not available, we’ve carefully chosen data from other reliable sources.

This primer is meant to give an overall snapshot of elementary and secondary education in the nation’s
public schools. In general, we’ve used data for the most recent year available. In many cases, these
recent data are compared with data from ten years earlier or with future projections to show how things
have changed or are expected to change. A few indicators, such as those relating to student achievement,
show trends going back two or more decades to provide a historical perspective.

http://www.cep-dc.org/cfcontent_file.cfm?Attachment=KoberUsher%5FReport%5FPrimer2012%5F1%2E19%2E12%2Epdf