EDUCATION
REPORT - School Population Growth
By Jerilyn Watson
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
About one-in-four people age three and older
in the United States is a student. The government says this new school
year finds more than seventy-three-million students in nursery school
through college. That is out of a national population of almost two-hundred-ninety
million people.
The Census Bureau estimates the number of elementary
through high school students at more than fifty-three million. This
is even more than there were in nineteen-sixty-nine. That was the year
when the last of the "baby boom" children entered American
schools.
The baby boom was a major increase in childbirth
in the United States. It began in nineteen-forty-six, after World War
Two, and lasted until nineteen-sixty-four.
Census Bureau studies help government agencies
decide how much to spend for education. Educators say the school population
growth means increased financial pressure on school systems. They need
more money to help serve more students.
The student population this fall should not
be a surprise. The government says there was major growth in the student
population during the nineteen-nineties. A new Census Bureau report
says the number increased by about twenty percent during those years.
This included kindergarten students, from about age five, up through
college students.
In some areas, school populations grew even
more. For example, in the West, the state of Nevada had a seventy-six
percent increase in students. That seemed natural enough. Nevada had
the largest population growth of any state during the nineteen-nineties.
Among other numbers, the Census Bureau says
twenty-six percent of high school students work while attending school.
And the agency reported a reduction in the number of students who leave
high school before they complete their studies. The dropout rate fell
from eleven percent in nineteen-ninety to just under ten percent in
two-thousand.
Another estimate says more children are attending
private school now than in the past. Currently, about ten percent of
all students of elementary or high school age go to private schools.
And, the Census Bureau says ninety-eight percent
of public schools in the United States are connected to the Internet.
This VOA Special English Education Report was
written by Jerilyn Watson.
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