Are We Measuring Up: Education Statistics in US

Here are some interesting statistics related to education in the United States. Statistics were gathered by entering a prompt into Google and finding the most recent statistics from the most reputable source, either government, foundation, research organization, or national newspaper reports.

In 2003, there were over 120,000 schools, public and private, in the US.
Education represents about 7% of per capita gross domestic product.
Teachers spend about 1.3 billion dollars in out-of-pocket resources to support their classroom instruction. This is slightly more than 1/3 of the amount we spend nationally on instructional materials. That is about $500 per teacher per year.
California spends about $47,000 per inmate while only spending about $9,000 for every student enrolled. New York State spends about $56,000 per inmate and approximately $16,000 for every student in the school system. Michigan pays about $34,000 for every prisoner and about $11,000 for a student. We spend about four times the amount for incarcerated prisoners than we do in educating a child.
Schools serve about 55 million children, or about 17% of the population.
1 in 50 children as estimated to be homeless or about 1.1 million school-aged children.
Between 16 ad 33% of American children are considered obese. In GA, 1 in 4 third graders are considered obese.
There are about 4 million teachers.
Estimates are that nearly 25% will retire within the next five years, or 1 million new teachers will be needed over next five years.
There are about 150,000 school administrators.
12 students to 1 adult in US school system.
Of the students entering 9^th Grade, only about 66% will graduate from high school in four years.
The ratio of students in public schools to instructional computers with internet access is about 3:1 in 2008. It was 12:1 in 1998.
In undergraduate schools there are 10 million women and 7 million men enrolled. The average man takes 7 years to graduate and the average woman takes 5 years.
Special education in the US enrolls about 1 out of 7 students.
In the Prose, Document and Quantitative skills components of literacy, only 15% of US adults are proficient in all three categories. In one of the largest literacy studies commissioned by the US government, about 42% of U.S. adults were in the lowest level on the literacy scale (literacy rate of 35 or below) and were living in poverty.