This familiar May visitor to edu-wonks’ desktops looks a bit different in 2013. Typically a bulky digest of all manner of education-related statistics, this year’s Condition of Education is more modern (with a beefed-up report and data website) and more svelte (by over 200 pages). The yearly tome of data now tracks but forty-two indicators across four areas: population statistics, participation in education, elementary and secondary education, and post-secondary education as well as data on four “spotlighted” stages: trends in employment rates by education attainment, Kindergarten entry timing, rural education, and college financing. From it, we learn that Hispanic immigrants are over three times as likely to drop out of high school than non-immigrant Hispanics; that charter school enrollment is still on the upswing, by 11 percent between 2009–10 and 2010–11; that 60 percent of kiddos aged three to five attend full-day preschool; that only 36 percent of female high school dropouts aged twenty to twenty-four are employed (compared to 59 percent of males of the same ilk); that employment rates among young adult males dropped at least 7 percentage points from 2008 and 2010—no matter their education level; and much more. NCES doesn’t attach policy recommendations to its data dump, but that shouldn’t stop the report from furthering some important conversations. Many, including us, have recently been questioning the “college for all” rhetoric, as an example. The dips seen in employment rates are further proof: We need to think hard about what worthy, non-college pathways to the middle-class might look like.
SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics, The Condition of Education 2013 (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Education Sciences, May 2013).
