Number of hours the average kid spends in school each year:
Number of hours the average 8 to 18 year old spends playing video games, going online, and watching TV each year (Figure based on average of 7 hours and 11 minutes a day.):
2007 Department of Education budget:
66.4 billion
2007 Department of Defense budget:
539.9 billion
Average starting teacher salary in the U.S. (2005):
$32,367
Average starting teacher salary in Luxembourg (In U.S. dollars) (2005) :
$70,908
State with highest 8th grade reading scores:
State with lowest 8th grade reading scores:
State with the highest high school graduation rank (2005):
Nebraska, 87.8%
State with the lowest high school graduation rank (2005):
Nevada, 55.8%
Percentage of kids who attend private schools (2005):
11.2 %
Percent of kids who are homeschooled (2003):
2.2%
Rank of U.S. in the world by literacy rate:
Percentage of male public school teachers in 1961:
Percentage of male public school teachers in 2001:
*Click on hyperlinks to see sources for statistics. All other statistics are from the 2009 World Almanac.
This is part of a New Urban Habitat series: Snapshots of America. You can read part one, A Snapshot of Car-Usage in America, here.
Wow! Incredible stats–kind of sums up why I’m not a teacher anymore and hope to homeschool my kids. But, big props to all the incredible teachers out there. Thanks for sharing!
Embarrassing, that’s all I have to say.
I like your new “snapshot” series ! I have (and have had for some time) a complaint about our education system in the U.S. One of the major forces behind our world standing is our capitalistic economic system. Its study should be ranked alongside “reading, writing and arithmetic”, but to my knowledge, is not. Thus we are, by and large, woefully economically naive. At the high school level, the basic tenets of capitalism should be proudly taught, so that coming generation will be conversant with the idiosyncrasies and policies of our economic system … things like how to budget, how to balance a checkbook, how to invest in the stock market, the many uses and misuses of interest payments, etc., etc.