Editor's Note (The View From Here)
The Condition of Education and the Education Marketplace
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has a mandate to report to Congress on the condition of education by June 1 of each year. Their recently released report, The Condition of Education 2018, gives us a look at the trends and developments in education using the latest available data. When looking at enrollment, public school enrollment has increased from 50.31 million in 2015 to 50.44 million in 2016. The number of students enrolled in public charter schools has increased from 2.7 million in 2014 to 2.8 million in 2015.
While the number of students continues to increase, the revenues stayed the same at about $664 billion. In the 2014-2015 school year, revenues for public schools looked like this: $56.4 billion from federal sources, $309 billion from state sources, $298.5 billion from local sources. Compared to the prior year, the federal contribution stayed about the same, while the state sources increased by $11 billion and the local funding increased by about $9 billion. During that same school year, total expenditures rose to $668 billion, or about $11,734 per student.
While it is nearly impossible to predict where education funding will end up in the next few years, indications are that this trend may continue, or, even more likely, schools will be forced to do more with less.
With this in mind, we present our annual Facilities Sourcebook, which is designed to serve as a year-round reference guide to facilities, security, technology and business services and products for the K-12 market. The businesses that are featured in this special section are advertisers that regularly support this magazine. Without them, we would not exist. We ask that you take that into consideration when you make future decisions about purchasing materials and services.
By the time you receive this issue, most of you will have begun a new school year. May it be a successful one!
A reminder, you can follow me on Twitter, @SPM_editor, and you are always welcome to contact me with your thoughts and ideas at jenderle@1105media.com.
This article originally appeared in the School Planning & Management July/August 2018 issue of Spaces4Learning.