Washington — Thirty years after baby boomers entered school in record numbers, their children are surpassing that feat, the Census Bureau says. The nearly 49 million students also are the most diverse one student in five has at least one foreign-born parent, and 5 percent of students are foreign-born.
Experts say today's students are drawing attention to the need for substantial dollars to be devoted to school construction and teacher training programs, with 30-year-old buildings deteriorating and a generation of teachers nearing retirement after decades in the classroom.
"We have a series of perverse incentives that encourage people to get out just as we need them to stay in," Bruce Hunter of the American Association of School Administrators said.
Hunter said large numbers of teachers who began teaching during the last wave in the late 1960s and 1970s are being encouraged to retire, even though many are in their 50s.
Sharon Lewis of the Council of Great City Schools said teacher shortages and problems with instructors teaching outside of their specialty will worsen as will problems with aging buildings.
"With the influx of students, that means we'll have to continue to use those buildings that are in bad shape and should be torn down," Lewis said.
The census data show that 48.7 million students, in public and private schools, were enrolled in the first through 12th grades as of October 1999 slightly more than in 1971, when enrollment last peaked.
An additional 3.8 million students were in kindergarten in 1999, for a total of about 52.5 million.
The Education Department predicts that total elementary and secondary school enrollment will rise to 53.2 million this fall, and that the number will peak in 2005 at about 53.5 million. That total covers public students from prekindergarten through high school, and private school students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
Baby boomers those born between 1946 and 1964 enrolled in unprecedented numbers in schools beginning in the 1950s.
Schools are trying to adapt to an increasingly diverse student body.
In Dearborn, Mich., school officials this spring will begin testing halal food, required by Islamic faith, in several city school cafeterias. About 35 percent of Dearborn's 17,000 students are Muslim, and in a few Dearborn grade schools, the student population is more than 90 percent Muslim.
The Jefferson County, Ky., school district last year said an average of 15 foreign-born students were enrolling each week from Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia, Cuba, Mexico and other nations.
In California, half the school children are either foreign-born or first-generation Americans. Voters have cut funds for bilingual programs, but the state was also among the first to create standards for its English as a Second Language programs.
No comments
Commenting is turned off for this story.