1988 Education Indicators

Education at a Glance is the authoritative source for information on the state of education around the world. The 2021 edition includes a focus on equity, investigating how progress through education and the associated learning and labour market outcomes are impacted by dimensions such as gender, socio-economic status, country of birth and regional location.

The education system in the United States is continually challenged to adapt and improve, in part because its mission has become far more ambitious than it once was. At the turn of the 20th century, less than one-tenth of students enrolled were expected to graduate from high school. Today, most people expect schools to prepare all students to succeed in postsecondary education and to prosper in a complex, fast-changing global economy. Goals have broadened to include not only rigorous benchmarks in core academic subjects, but also technological literacy and the subtler capacities known as 21st-century skills. To identify the most important measures for education and other issues and provide quality data on them to the American people, Congress authorized the creation of a Key National Indicators System (KNIS). This system will be a single Web-based information source designed to help policy makers and the public better assess the position and progress of the nation across a wide range of areas. Identifying the right set of indicators for each area is not a small challenge. To serve their purpose of providing objective information that can encourage improvement and innovation, the indicators need to be valid and reliable but they also need to capture the report committee's aspirations for education. This report describes a workshop, planned under the aegis of the Board on Testing and Assessment and the Committee on National Statistics of the National Research Council. Key National Education Indicators is a summary of the meeting of a group with extensive experience in research, public policy, and practice. The goal of the workshop was not to make a final selection of indicators, but to take an important first step by clearly identifying the parameters of the challenge.

The final report of the congressionally-mandated Special Study Panel on Education Indicators (SSPEI) that was transmitted to Congress as required by the Hawkins-Stafford Education Amendments of 1988 is presented. This report is divided into two sections. Part I--"Education Counts"--presents the SSPEI's overall conception of how an indicator information system should be developed; provides recommendations for improvements in Federal data collection and reporting in six major issue areas; and includes information of direct interest to general readers, educators, policymakers, and business leaders. Part II--"An Indicator System To Monitor the Nation's Educational Health"--presents more detailed information about the six issues. It is designed to provide analysts and researchers with more substantive guidance on the six issues, identify existing data sources, and cite gaps in currently available data. The six issues relate to the six national education goals proposed by the President and governors in 1989 concerning: readiness for school; high school completion; student achievement and citizenship; science and mathematics; adult literacy and lifelong learning; and safe, disciplined, and drug-free schools. It is concluded that: a comprehensive data, information, and research system is needed to guide education policymakers' decisions; statistical indicators are powerful tools for identifying problems and galvanizing public support to address them, but a limited set of indicators can be misleading; and the information system for developing education indicators should be organized around learner outcomes, quality of educational institutions, readiness for school, societal support for learning, education and economic productivity, and equity among other factors. (RLC)

This book surveys the use of performance indicators of teaching, of reseach and of administration, and offers suggestions on how they might be developed and used.