• How Many Students Were Enrolled in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools?
• How Many Teachers Were There?
• How Many Staff Supervised or Provided Support Services for Public Education?
• How Many Students Graduated From High School During the 1996-97 School Year?

How many students were enrolled in elementary and secondary public schools in 1997-98? How many staff members were paid to teach, supervise, and provide support services for education? How many students graduated from high school in 1996-97? The information to answer these and other questions is reported from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary and Secondary Education, School Year 1997-98.

Figure 1.-Distribution of elementary and secondary education staff by category: School year 1997-98

In school year 1997-98, there were 46 million students enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools in the 50 states and the District of Columbia (table 1). Of these students, 25.7 million were in prekindergarten through grade 6, an additional 19.8 million were in grades 7 through 12, and the remaining 0.7 million were ungraded students.^*

Table 1.—Public school student membership, by grade and state: Fall 1997

Table 1.—Public school student membership, by grade and state: Fall 1997 (continued)

California had the most public elementary and secondary school students (5,804,000), followed by Texas (3,892,000) and New York (2,862,000). The three lowest student counts were in the District of Columbia (77,000), Wyoming (97,000), and Vermont (106,000).

About 2.7 million full-time-equivalent teachers provided instruction in public elementary and secondary schools in the 1997-98 school year (table 2). Among this group, 1,519,000 were elementary school teachers (including prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers) and 983,000 were secondary school teachers. The remaining 242,000 teachers taught ungraded classes or were not assigned a specific grade.

Table 2.—Public school student/teacher ratio, student membership, and teachers, by level of instruction and state: Fall 1997

The ratio of total students to total teachers for the nation was 16.8 students per teacher. These ratios ranged from lows of 13.4 students per teacher in Vermont and 13.5 in Maine to highs of 22.9 in Utah and 21.6 in California. The median student/teacher ratio was 16.3:1; that is, about half of the states had a student/teacher ratio equal to or greater than 16.3:1, and half had a lower ratio. Student/teacher ratio should not be interpreted as average class size since not all teachers are assigned to a class (for example, music and reading teachers in elementary schools).

In addition to the teachers described previously, about 556,000 teachers' aides directly assisted teachers in providing instruction (table 3). An additional 35,000 instructional coordinators and supervisors helped teachers through curriculum development and in service training. Support staff for students included 91,000 guidance counselors and 52,000 librarians. This translates to about 508 students for every guidance counselor reported, and 884 students for each librarian. An additional 1,245,000 staff members provided support services for students. This support included food, health, library, maintenance, transportation, security, and other services in the nation's public schools. There were 126,000 school administrators (mostly principals and assistant principals), 51,000 school district administrators, and about 358,000 administrative support staff.

Table 3.—Number of staff employed by public elementary and secondary school systems and percentage of total staff, by category and state: Fall 1997

Table 3.—Number of staff employed by public elementary and secondary school systems and percentage of total staff, by category and state: Fall 1997 (continued)

The relative distribution of all staff is illustrated in figure 1. Instructional staff (teachers, instructional aides, and coordinators) made up 63.5 percent of all staff. Another 26 percent of all staff (librarians, counselors, psychologists, and other support staff) provided support services to schools and students. Administrators and administrative support staff made up 10 percent of all education staff. On the average, there were 16 teachers and 13 other staff for each administrator. All of these distributions and ratios vary greatly from state to state.

Some 2,341,000 students received regular high school diplomas in the 50 states and the District of Columbia during the 1996-97 school year and subsequent summer (table 4). An additional 185,000 students received other (alternative) diplomas or high school equivalency certificates (the latter group includes only those who were 19 or younger). National totals for alternative and high school equivalency certificate recipients and other completers represent an undercount due to missing data in some states. Finally, some 29,000 students received some high school completion certificate other than a diploma or an equivalency certificate. (Note that some states grant only regular diplomas and the high school equivalency certificates.)

Table 4.—Number of public school graduates, 12th-grade student membership, and 9th-grade student membership 3 years earlier, by state: School year 1996-1997