The recently released The Condition of Education by the Institute of Education Sciences (USDE) provides a wealth of authoritative data on preschool, elementary, secondary and higher education. Here are some interesting figures on educational alternatives from this readable report:
-10,900 alternative schools and programs serve 613,000 at-risk students, about 1.3% of all public school students. 80% of school districts in the South have at risk alternative programs but it’s only 28% in the central section of the US.
-27 % of students attend a school of choice where there is a choice of public programs–about 50% of districts provide for choices. Another 24% of parents exercise their own program of choice by moving to a preferred school or program.
-The total enrollment of nonpublic school students has dropped 1% in the past decade to 9.7% of all students.
-Homeschooled students, about 2.2% of all students increased to 1.1 million from 850,000 in the most recent four-year period.