10 most (and least) popular Advanced Placement (AP) subjects
Ambitious college-bound U.S. high school students continue to have a deep aversion to math and science, according to my reading of the latest Advanced Placement (AP) test data released by the College Board on February 11, 2014. In this table I compiled of the top 10 subjects, only Calculus AB (the easier of the two math […]
Ed Data Geek David Stewart says tracking interim assessments isn’t useful.
In a Wired blog, “Inside the Educational Data Revolution,” David Stewart, CEO of Tembo, laments how in the largest US school systems, “millions of dollars are being spent on interim assessment systems, intended to track student performance throughout the year and adapt teaching strategies in advance of the high-stakes year-end tests. The problem is that there’s almost […]
K-12 Online Education data show greatest growth in red states
I was looking for trends in the online education figures last compiled by the National Center of Education Statistics in November 2011 (Table 121 in the 2012 Digest of Education Statistics). The data we have count how many school districts offer online classes for K-12 students and how many online courses students are taking. There […]
New World Bank education data portal shows that Nigeria has weak early childhood programs
I was just tinkering around on the new education data portal, called Saber, launched by the World Bank in January 2014 that supposedly lets you compare education data across developing countries. I looked at Early Childhood Education programs. Data was available for only eight nations (Colombia, Kyrgyz Republic, Liberia, Nigeria, Samoa, Sierra Leone, Tajikistan and Tanzania). […]
Unlikely to graduate college if you take time off after high school
I’m always telling high school graduates to take time off after high school to do something interesting before college. That’s what I did. My parents feared I would never go to college. But I won out in the end. And the downtime — after the pressure cooker of high school — helped me figure out […]
Kindergarteners of working mothers score higher
Here’s another data point in the mommy wars. Kindergarten children of full-time and part-time working parents score higher in both math and reading than their peers with a stay-at-home parent. But children with only a single parent had lower average test scores than either two parent scenario. That’s according to the Digest of Education Statistics 2012 that […]
Top 10 education data stories of 2013
For my year-end post I’m highlighting my 10 favorite Education By The Numbers stories of the year. Thank you to everyone who has read and commented and made the first few months of this blog an interesting experiment. I look forward to continuing this conversation about education data with you in 2014. 1. Top US […]
Top performing cities on NAEP test have the least poverty — but some poor cities do surprisingly well
Do cities with less poverty test better? Yes, but the correlation is not as tight as you might guess, according to 2013 test scores released Dec. 18, 2013. I put together a spreadsheet looking at the percentage of students who qualify for free and reduced priced lunch in each of the 21 urban school districts […]
Low-income inner-city achievement gap starts to close, test scores of urban school districts improve faster than nation over past 10 years, Washington D.C. stands out
The test scores of fourth and eighth graders in large cities have been improving faster than the national average has over the past decade, according to federal test data released Dec. 18, 2013. Wide achievement gaps between large cities, often with huge concentrations of low-income minorities, and the average U.S. student have closed by as much […]
Interview: Jill Barshay on PISA scores, backsliding of top US students, Asian testing strength
Hechinger Report contributing editor Jill Barshay took part in a podcast, “The United States Gets a C,” with American Radio Works this week (Dec 10, 2013). “The results are in from academic tests of 15-year-olds in 65 countries and regions. PISA shows Finland slipping, Vietnam doing well, and the United States still middle of the pack.” Barshay and […]
