Introduction

This report presents findings on the numbers of public school students and staff in the United States and other jurisdictions¹ in school year 2007-08, using data from the State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary/Secondary Education of the Common Core of Data (CCD) survey system. The CCD is an annual collection of data that are reported by state education agencies to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) through the U.S. Department of Education's EDFacts data collection system.

Because the purpose of this report is to introduce new data through the presentation of tables containing descriptive information, only selected findings are presented. These findings have been chosen to demonstrate the range of information available when using the CCD rather than to discuss all of the observed differences, and they are not meant to emphasize any particular issue. Data in this report, taken from the State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary/Secondary Education, may differ from data in other CCD reports based on data from the Local Education Agency Universe Survey and the Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey.

For the school year 2007-08, data were reported by all states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the CCD collection through the EDFacts system. The Department of Defense dependents schools (overseas and domestic) and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands reported directly to the CCD. American Samoa, Guam, and the Bureau of Indian Education did not report for 2007-08.

The State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary/Secondary Education presents counts of students by grade and by grade and race/ethnicity. The survey also presents counts of full-time-equivalent (FTE)² teachers, aides, support staff, and administrators in public schools and school districts.

State education agencies (SEAs) participate in the CCD voluntarily, following standard definitions for the data items they report. In some cases, SEAs may be unable to report a data item, or may not be able to report a data item in exact accordance with a CCD definition. When states were unable to report key data items, values for these items were collected from alternate sources, imputed, or adjusted. Please see Appendix A: Methodology and Technical Notes in this report for a detailed discussion of collections from alternate sources, imputations, and adjustments.

While tables include data for all of the CCD respondents, the totals shown on the tables and the discussion of findings in the text include only the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

More information about the survey content and methodology can be found in appendix A. Appendix B is a glossary of key CCD terms used in this report.

More information about CCD surveys and products is available at the CCD website.

---

¹ The CCD includes the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Department of Defense dependents schools (overseas and domestic), the Bureau of Indian Education, Puerto Rico, and the four other jurisdictions of American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
² Full-time equivalent (FTE) is the amount of time required to perform an assignment stated as a proportion of a full-time position. 

Top