Condition of Education 2021

The Condition of Education contains indicators on the state of education in the United States, from prekindergarten through postsecondary education, as well as labor force outcomes and international comparisons. Beginning with the 2021 edition, the Condition of Education also includes indicators from the former Indicators of School Crime and Safety. This year’s edition also includes two Spotlight indicators, which use experimental data from the Household Pulse Survey to examine preliminary educational impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, particularly related to online learning at both the K-12 and postsecondary levels. Readers can browse the Condition of Education Indicator System online and download PDFs of individual indicators. The new, more user-friendly Report on the Condition of Education, which highlights and synthesizes key findings from the Condition of Education, is now available in PDF format. Key findings from the report include: Among adults with children under 18 in the home enrolled in public or private school, two-thirds reported in September 2020 that classes had been moved to a distance learning format using online resources. Among adults with at least one household member planning to take postsecondary classes in fall 2020, 45 percent reported that classes for at least one household member would be in different formats. In fall 2018, public charter school enrollment accounted for 7 percent (3.3 million students) of public enrollments, more than doubling from 3 percent (1.6 million students) in 2009. In 2018–19, the U.S. average adjusted cohort graduation rate (ACGR) for public high school students was 86 percent, the highest rate since ACGR was first measured, in 2010–11. Of the 3.2 million high school completers who graduated in the first 9 months of 2019, some 2.1 million, or 66 percent, were enrolled in college in October 2019. At the international level, the United States ranked in the top 25 percent of participating education systems in both mathematics and science at both the 4th and 8th grade levels in the 2019 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).