Serving as Associate Commissioner of the division responsible for preparing The Condition of Education has enabled me to come full circle. You see, I began my federal career some 25 years ago working on the Condition of Education when the report was in its infancy. To give you an idea of how the report has progressed, my first job was hand-plotting the graphics, which were then converted by a graphic artist into final figures. We later graduated to producing the graphics on a mainframe computer, which at the time was considered innovative. Today, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) uses the latest technology not only to develop the indicators and generate the graphics, but also to allow top education researchers from around the country to work on the report collaboratively.

Quite a bit has changed, but quite a bit remains the same. The Condition of Education continues to play a key role in fulfilling the core NCES responsibility to report on trends and conditions in education for the nation. The report’s mandate dates to 1974, but it has an important antecedent in the original mission of the first (and short-lived) Department of Education, created in 1867. In that year, Congress legislated the establishment of a Department of Education to “gather statistics and facts on the condition and progress of education in the United States and Territories.” Education in America today—and the task of assessing its scope, quality, and impact—are immensely more complex, but the need to fulfill this essential federal responsibility remains unchanged.

Opening the first Condition of Education report is similar to unsealing a time capsule. Some issues are perennial. Back in 1975, the Condition reported that the benefits of education for adults included greater voter participation, higher employment, greater income, and better academic prospects for their children. This year’s report adds to the litany of benefits by showing that the better educated are more likely to report better health, even after controlling for income. In 1975, the Condition reported on the effects of the baby boom; in 2001, the report shows the impact of the baby boom echo (the children born to baby boomers) and how the population crest is now reaching the high schools. When The Condition of Education reported on the performance of elementary and secondary students on basic skills assessments in 1975, it showed large differences between Whites and Blacks and between students whose parents had no high school and those who had some post-secondary education. Today, we show data for Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics and differences between students whose parents did not complete high school and those whose parents have at least a bachelor’s degree. Both the 1975 and 2001 reports show appreciable gains in educational attainment over time. Yet comparing the data in the two volumes shows that the increases in female attainment of postsecondary degrees projected for the mid-1970s were outpaced by the reality.

Just as we have moved from hand-drawn to PC-generated graphics, the Center has improved its indicators and its manner of reporting data. The Condition of Education now reports on a core set of indicators each year, supplemented by special feature indicators. Elaboration of the data has greatly expanded over time, and supplementary tables now make up half of the report. Technical notes in the 1975 volume comprised all of three pages, with no reference to sampling errors associated with our surveys. Today, the report does a much better job of explaining the uncertainty surrounding survey estimates and trend lines.

Five years ago, The Condition of Education was released on the Internet to provide immediate access for audiences unable to obtain print copies of the report. Each year, the Web version of the Condition has been upgraded, and the rapidly expanding use of government documents on the Internet means that the Web versions are now used much more frequently than the print versions. New editions of The Condition of Education will take advantage of this evolving technology to provide more frequent updates of indicators that are not printed every year and to make reference materials more convenient. Rather than merely being facsimiles of what is printed, future Web versions will go beyond the print versions. The Web versions will link to further material and will be easy to search electronically. Aside from technological improvements, innovations in surveys and statistical methods will increase the research depth of the publication to create more meaningful indicators. Future editions of the Condition will also continue to feature essays that analyze recent data with state-of-the-art techniques and are designed to inform policy debates. By bringing together information presented in a number of indicators, along with results from other publications, the essays will tell a more complete story about complex issues. In addition, innovations in graphics will make salient findings more accessible to general audiences.

Although The Condition of Education has been produced since 1975, it is the newest of the three flagship reports produced annually by the Center. The other two are the Digest of Education Statistics and Projections of Education Statistics.

The Digest of Education Statistics brings together education statistics at all levels. It is the Center’s oldest annual report series, dating to 1962, and remains the most widely used NCES reference work (judging from the number of Web visits—about 124,000 in the year 2000). Its hundreds of tables—about two-thirds of them updated annually—plus supporting figures, text, and documentation cover a full range of education topics, from early childhood activities to postdoctoral occupations. The Digest addresses the needs of researchers, policy analysts, and others not only for basic statistics, but also for detailed data and breakouts of many demographic and institutional groups from all of the Center surveys. It also presents an extensive collection of state-level data, and some district-level data, to assist state and local policymakers. In addition, it contains data for individual colleges, including the largest colleges in the country and historically Black and Hispanic colleges. Most of these statistics are printed exclusively in the Digest, the 2000 edition of which contained 549 pages and 427 tables. Work is currently under way on a Web-based system designed to allow interim updates to the annual report.

Projections of Education Statistics, first issued in 1964, contains forecasts for 10 years into the future of key education statistics to meet the needs of state and federal policymakers. This report includes state-level projections of public school enrollment and high school graduates and national-level projections for public and private school teachers, school and college expenditures, and a variety of college enrollment and graduate variables. These education projections are part of a wide range of federal forecasts. The forecasts for this report are derived using demographic and economic data from other statistical agencies and organizations. These forecasts have been extensively used in other NCES reports as well as in reports produced by other federal offices, including the Department’s annual “Back to School” release. The addition of state-level statistics (beginning in 1994) has made the report even more popular among state officials and research offices. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also uses Projections forecasts to evaluate its education employment models. Private corporations use the Projections forecasts to conduct marketing studies for school products.