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Fueled by rising immigration and the baby boom echo, U.S. public school enrollment has increased steadily through the early 2000s and is expected to peak at an all-time high of 50 million in 2014, according to a report released today by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics.

The Condition of Education 2005 found that 42 percent of public school students were racial or ethnic minorities in 2003, markedly up from 22 percent in 1972. The report attributed this increased diversity to the proportionate growth of Hispanic enrollment, from 6 percent in 1972 to 19 percent in 2003. It noted that Hispanic enrollment nationwide surpassed that of African American students for the first time in 2002, while in the West region, minority public enrollment exceeded White enrollment in 2003.

"These trends illustrate why we are focusing so much time and energy on closing the achievement gap that exists between groups of students," U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said. "We want to ensure that students are empowered with the math and reading skills they will need to succeed in college and compete for jobs."

The Condition of Education is a congressionally mandated report that conveys information on 40 indicators about education in the United States. The indicators cover all aspects of education, from student achievement to school environment and from early childhood through postsecondary education. In addition, the Condition of Education includes a special analysis of data on teacher mobility.

That report shows that 17 percent of teachers in 1999-2000 started the school year as new hires at their school, but the majority of those new hires had previous teaching experience. Public school teachers in high-poverty schools were about twice as likely as their counterparts in low-poverty schools to transfer to another school following the 1999-2000 school year. Other findings of The Condition:

• The percentages of fourth- and eighth-graders who read at the proficient level or above on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) increased between 1992 and 2003.

• From 1990 to 2003, the math performance of fourth- and eighth-graders, as measured by NAEP, improved steadily.

• Between 1990 and 2002, total expenditures per student in public elementary and secondary schools increased by 24 percent in constant dollars.

• Tuition and fees per student in degree-granting public two- and four-year post-secondary institutions increased by 99 percent between 1970 and 2001 in constant dollars.

The NCES is the statistics-gathering center of the Institute of Education Sciences, the independent research, evaluation and statistical arm of the Department of Education.

The full text of The Condition of Education 2005 (in HTML format), along with related data tables and indicators from previous years, can be viewed today at http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe.

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