Number of elementary and secondary students approaches 50 million
A special thanks to our friend David Quinlan at the U. S. Department of Education for letting us know that the latest report is available on the number and types of public elementary and secondary schools.
According to the e-newsletter that David prepares:
The average student/teacher ratio in U.S. public schools was 15.8 in 2007-08 – a
ratio that ranged from 9.0 in Maine to 23.5 in Utah. Other findings include:
 * About 48.9 million students attended 98,916 operating public elementary and secondary schools in the 2007–08 school year.
* Almost 1.3 million students, approximately 3% of public school students, were enrolled in 4,388 charter schools in 2007-08.
* The largest percentage of students attended suburban schools (35 percent), followed by schools in cities (29 percent), rural areas (23 percent), and towns (13 percent).
Full report
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Dennis Embry honored by Kansas 
Speaking of friends, Dennis Embry, the Tucson psychologist who gives one of the best workshops we’ve ever seen, has received the Exemplary Service to Children and Families Award at the Kansas Governor’s Conference on Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.
Web site
Creative epidemiology
The aforementioned Dr. Embry has been encouraging the use of “creative epidemiology” – his term for making statistics interesting. Here’s an example: “"In Pima County, we fill 204 school buses per year with kids who are arrested for delinquent acts. Is that acceptable when we have the knowledge to reduce that by 50% quickly but are not doing so."
Delving into the 2009 Pride Survey National Summary, we’ve come up with a few “creative epidemiology” factoids of our own:
There are about 3.25 million students in twelfth grade in America (Common Core of Data), and 22% of them report that they drink alcohol weekly, which could mean 715,000 weekly drinkers in the twelfth grade.
So here’s the creative “epi stat”:
“We could fill the Rose Bowl eight times with twelfth graders who drink every week.”
(The Rose Bowl holds 92,542 spectators. There are perhaps 715,000 weekly drinkers in the twelfth grade. 715,000 divided by 92,542 equals 7.7, rounded off to eight.)
Here’s another one.
In the twelfth grade, 4.5% of students drink every day. That could represent 146,000 students.
So here’s the creative “epi stat”:
“The number of twelfth graders who drink daily would equal every child born in America for the next 13 days.” |
