White students predicted to be in the minority in U.S. public schools by fall 2014
The National Center for Education Statistics released its “Projections of Education Statistics to 2022” with data on enrollment, teachers, graduates, and expenditures. Page 33, Table 3 shows how white students are projected to switch from majority to minority status this fall 2014. Click on the table below to see a larger version. I also found […]
High tech collaborations between traditional schools and after-school or museum programs
In the first installment of the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access’s new online discussion series, “Digital Directions in Learning”, academic researchers highlighted the Young Writers Project, as an example of an innovative high-tech community that allows students to write, revise and share their writing with students at other schools. It began as an […]
Top 10 teachers in Florida illustrate how messy and absurd the new teacher data is
This week of February 24, 2014 the State of Florida was forced to dump a boat load of data on its teachers into the public domain (It lost a law suit to Times Union newspaper in Florida, which requested the data). Nearly every public and charter school teacher in the state is named. And next […]
More students don’t always mean lower test scores
When masses more students began taking the SAT in the 1980s and 1990s, average scores dropped so much that the SAT makers had to recalibrate the scoring system in 1995. To make sure the national average still approached 500 in each verbal and math section, each student got a bump of about 50 points (a […]
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 […]
