Book Description

The publicly available statistical information on U.S. public school districts to date has been limited to certain demographic characteristics of districts, student enrollment and racial composition, and the numbers of teachers. To enlarge this fund of knowledge, information on the variety of attributes, policies, and practices of public school districts in the United States is presented here. The report draws on data from a nationally representative survey of schools, teachers, principals, and public school districts. The topics covered here include geographic and demographic characteristics, the number and racial composition of students and teachers, the number and qualification of new hires, hiring criteria, teacher demand, and district efforts to recruit and retain teachers, teacher compensation and incentives, programs and services provided by the district, district graduation requirements, and other student policies. Within each of these topic areas, school districts are compared across three demographic and two geographic characteristics in the hope that local educators and policymakers can use the information to compare the situation in their school districts with similar types of districts nationally. The report does not assume any statistical expertise on the part of its readers and graphs are used extensively in each chapter to explicate the findings. A highlight of the survey's findings are presented at the front of the report. (RJM)