A Letter From the Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics

May 2024

On behalf of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), I am pleased to present the 2024 edition of the Condition of Education, our annual report mandated by the U.S. Congress. This report summarizes the latest data on education in the United States—spanning from early childhood to postsecondary and beyond—and covers topics such as enrollment, student achievement, teacher turnover, education finances, and international comparisons. Production of this report requires expertise in more than a dozen data sources and efforts from a dedicated team of data analysts, indicator authors, editors, and reviewers.

This year’s report presents the most recent available data—ranging from 2021 to 2023—which continue to shed new light on education during and recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. As the country has worked to learn from and respond to the pandemic, so has NCES. For example, NCES and the Institute of Education Science (IES) held a Mathematics Summit in 2023 that gathered national, state, and local leaders to share diverse insights on the unprecedented declines in mathematics achievement, as evidenced by National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results in 2022. In the development of this Condition of Education report, we reflected on the questions we have received over the last few years, particularly those related to changes in elementary and secondary enrollment. This resulted in the inclusion of new data in this year’s report, particularly related to career and technical information (CTE) and private school students. With these additions and other refinements, the Condition of Education continues to fulfill its mandate to provide high-quality and useful information to policymakers as well as families, educators, researchers, and the education community.  

The Condition of Education is one of NCES’s most important and popular reports­­––remaining one of our most downloaded reports each year­––and the Annual Reports and Information Staff continues to look for ways to make it more timely, informative, and user friendly­­. This year, the Annual Reports and Information Staff has continued to expand the use of interactive data visualizations in the online indicator pages and the presentation of data for outlying areas and jurisdictions other than states (e.g., Puerto Rico, Bureau of Indian Education Schools) where possible. We also expanded our data coverage by reporting additional data on topics such as public school finances (e.g., Title I participation, revenues and expenditures from COVID-19 federal assistance funds) and English learners (e.g., program participation). Additionally, while previous editions of the report have presented data on the recent changes in public elementary and secondary enrollment, this edition includes the first year of data from the Private School Universe Survey (PSS) since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as new findings about enrollment of young children (from the U.S. Census Bureau) and high school graduates in private schools. Key findings from these data include the following:

• Private K–12 enrollment was 4.7 million students in both fall 2019 and fall 2021. In comparison, the number of K–12 students who were enrolled in public schools was 2 percent lower in fall 2021 than in fall 2019 (48.0 vs. 49.2 million). Private school students made up 9 percent of combined public and private enrollment in fall 2021 and in fall 2019, as they had in each year throughout the preceding decade.
• NEW: In 2022, some 20 percent of 3- to 5-year-olds were receiving a private education (including home schooling). Overall, 59 percent of 3- to 5-year-olds were enrolled in school, which was higher than in 2021 (53 percent) but still lower than in 2019 (61 percent).
• NEW: Among 12th-graders who were enrolled in private schools in fall 2020, some 96 percent graduated in 2020–21. In comparison, the adjusted cohort graduation rate (ACGR) for public school students—which is based on a cohort of 9th-graders—was 87 percent in 2021–22. (See indicator for more information on the difference between these measures.)

Beyond improvements to our core indicators, this year’s report also includes a new Spotlight indicator on CTE. Key findings from this indicator include the following:

• In 2020–21, among public schools hiring for at least one teaching position, 31 percent had difficulty or were unable to fill open positions in CTE. This was higher than the percentages of public schools that reported having difficulties or being unable to fill open positions for social studies; physical education or health; general elementary; English or language arts; and music or art (ranging from 11 to 23 percent) but lower than the percentages that reported having difficulties or being unable to fill open positions for physical sciences, special education, and foreign languages (37, 40, and 42 percent, respectively).
• Among 2013 public high school graduates ever enrolled in postsecondary education by June 2021, a higher percentage of CTE concentrators than of nonconcentrators had received an associate’s degree as their highest postsecondary degree (14 vs. 9 percent) and a lower percentage had received a bachelor’s or higher degree (48 vs. 54 percent).
• Among 2013 public high school graduates who earned an associate’s degree as their highest degree by June 2021, a higher percentage of CTE concentrators than of nonconcentrators earned their degree in a CTE field (58 vs. 45 percent).

The full contents of the Condition of Education—which comprises a system of indicators covering a wide range of topics and outcomes across the educational career—can be accessed online. A synthesized overview of findings from these indicators can be found in the Report on the Condition of Education. The online indicator system also includes a section focused on School Crime and Safety as well as a section focused on Education Across America, which explores the condition of education across geographic locales (i.e., city, suburban, town, and rural).

The Condition of Education also includes findings At a Glance, which allow readers to quickly make comparisons within and across indicators, as well as a Reader’s Guide, a Glossary, and a Guide to Sources that provide additional information to help provide context for the indicators. In addition, each indicator references the source data tables that were used to produce that indicator. Most of these data tables are in NCES’s Digest of Education Statistics.

In the upcoming years, NCES will embark on a modernization process to align the Condition of Education to the current and future needs of our users. Our vision is to maintain the same level of rigor NCES is trusted for while also increasing the timeliness and granularity (or level of detail) found in the report. This may include interim releases throughout the year as data become available, indicators reported at finer levels of geographic detail (e.g., by congressional district), and additional analyses to further describe the trends observed. 

In addition to publishing the Condition of Education, NCES produces a wide range of other reports and datasets designed to help inform policymakers and the public about significant trends and topics in education. More information about NCES’s latest activities and releases can be found on our website or by following us on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Additionally, our Newsflash provides email notifications of our latest releases.

The Condition of Education shines a light on emerging education issues in the United States and around the world. NCES is thinking critically about these issues and will continue to adapt and respond to new needs.

Peggy G. Carr, Ph.D.
Commissioner
National Center for Education Statistics