School Population Growth

By Jerilyn Watson
Broadcast: September 11, 2003
This is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English Education Report.
About one-in-four people age three and older in the United States is a student. The government says this new school year finds more than seventy-three-million students in nursery school through college. That is out of a national population of almost two-hundred-ninety million people.
The Census¹ Bureau estimates the number of elementary through high school students at more than fifty-three million. This is even more than there were in nineteen-sixty-nine. That was the year when the last of the "baby boom" children entered American schools.
The baby boom was a major increase in childbirth in the United States. It began in nineteen-forty-six, after World War Two, and lasted until nineteen-sixty-four.
Census Bureau studies help government agencies decide how much to spend for education. Educators say the school population growth means increased financial pressure on school systems. They need more money to help serve more students.
The student population this fall should not be a surprise. The government says there was major growth in the student population during the nineteen-nineties. A new Census Bureau report says the number increased by about twenty percent during those years. This included kindergarten students, from about age five, up through college students.
In some areas, school populations grew even more. For example, in the West, the state of Nevada had a seventy-six percent increase in students. That seemed natural enough. Nevada had the largest population growth of any state during the nineteen-nineties.
Among other numbers, the Census Bureau says twenty-six percent of high school students work while attending school. And the agency reported a reduction in the number of students who leave high school before they complete their studies. The 1)dropout² rate fell from eleven percent in nineteen-ninety to just under ten percent in two-thousand.
Another estimate says more children are attending private school now than in the past. Currently, about ten percent of all students of elementary or high school age go to private schools.
And, the Census Bureau says ninety-eight percent of public schools in the United States are connected to the Internet.
This VOA Special English Education Report was written by Jerilyn Watson. This is Steve Ember.
注释:
1) dropout [5drCp 7aut] n.退学学生，中途退学，辍学学生

1 census   

n.(官方的)人口调查，人口普查

参考例句：

• A census of population is taken every ten years.人口普查每10年进行一次。
• The census is taken one time every four years in our country.我国每四年一次人口普查。

2 dropout   

n.退学的学生；退学；退出者

参考例句：

• There is a high dropout rate from some college courses.有些大学课程的退出率很高。
• In the long haul,she'll regret having been a school dropout.她终归会后悔不该中途辍学。