New Education Statistics Released: Who Will Be Left Behind in 2020

Late last week President Obama announced significant changes to No Child Left Behind – the federal education reform statute that requires all students be proficient in math and reading by 2014. The changes will provide states with more autonomy to oversee their own educational improvement efforts. As the New York Times reported, those states that adopt higher educational standards, address problems at their lowest-performing schools and overhaul teacher evaluation procedures can apply for waivers of some key provisions of the law – including the 2014 proficiency deadline.

Will those changes have a significant impact on the performance of the nation’s schools and students? Time will tell. A recently released compilation of federal statistics does provide some insight into what changes the nation’s public education system might see over the course of the next decade.

The National Center for Education Statistics recently released “Projections of Education Statistics to 2020”. That report includes state-by-state data on projections of public elementary and secondary enrollment and public high school graduates to the year 2020. Users can browse through the document or download it as a PDF. Among the information you will find are statistics relating to school enrollment, student-teacher ratios, per-pupil expenditures and number of high school graduates.

The No Child Left Behind logo that appears above left comes from the House Committee on Education in the Workforce.