education today: who are today's students?

In the United States during the 2001-2002 school year, 91,380 public schools provided instruction to 47.7 million students. These schools come in all sizes and all combinations of grades. 3,123 school districts enroll fewer than 300 students each but 1.5 percent of school districts enroll 25,000 or more students each and account for nearly one-third of all students. The communities where you find them and the racial/ethnic mix in the schools vary so radically that there is no such thing as a typical American school. Likewise, there is no such thing as a typical American student.

If you want to learn about students or what kinds of teachers may be most needed in the future, you have to look at some of the statistics available on students and their schools.

• 98% of students attend regular schools.
• One percent of students attend alternative schools and less than one-half of 1 percent are in special education or vocational schools.
• 57% of students live in large or midsize cities but 1 in 10 students attends a rural school not within a metropolitan area.
• One-fourth of the students in the U.S. go to inner city schools and these students are the most likely to come from a high poverty area and are also the most likely to be from many racial/ethnic groups.
• In the largest urban school districts, 63% of students are individuals of African-American, Hispanic and Latino, Asian, and Native American descent.
• Across the entire U.S, 39% of students are members of a minority group.
• Forty-one states have migrant students. California served 331,000 migrant students in 2001-2002.
• Forty-seven states have students who need English language services. In Texas, one in seven students receives English language services.
• Thirteen percent of students have a Special Education individualized education program (IEP).
• Half of the students in the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and West Virginia are eligible for free lunch.
• Illinois serves fifteen percent of its students in magnet schools. 28 states have at least one magnet school.

In the future, statistics tell us that the acute need will be for teachers in urban areas, especially in inner city schools, and the need will be greatest in those states with rapidly growing populations such as California, Texas, North Carolina, and Florida. There is also a great need for bilingual educators and teachers of color to meet the demand of non-English speaking students and to serve a school population that is becoming increasingly multicultural and multi-ethnic.

So, WHO ARE TODAY’S STUDENTS? They are black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American. They live in big cities, small towns, and maybe they even move around according to the harvest. They attend wealthy suburban schools and poor inner city schools and very small rural schools. They may get free lunch and they may have an IEP. They speak English and Spanish and Korean and Portuguese. They are as different as they are alike but the one thing they have in common is that they all deserve a chance at the best education possible with the most qualified teachers.

Sources : Snyder, T. and Hoffman, C. (2002). Digest of Education Statistics 2001 (NCES 2002-130).
National Teacher Recruitment Clearinghouse. www.rnt.org