We are continuing our examination of very different physics availability numbers reported by AIP Statistics and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR). The essential difference appears to be the number of schools included in the denominator. The U.S. Department of Education classifies schools into one of five types based upon the curriculum offered: regular, special education, vocational, alternative, and a fifth classification for schools that do not fit into any of the first four. In AIP Statistics’ Quadrennial Survey of High School Physics Teachers, data are collected from a nationally representative sample of all public and private regular and vocational schools that have at least three seniors (students enrolled in 12th grade).

Topics
Educational assessment
1.
AIP Statistics estimates that 95% of U.S. high school seniors attend a school where physics is offered regularly, and OCR reports that only 60% of schools offer physics.
2.
The OCR data are available for download from http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/crdc-2013-14.html. We have run the calculations.
© 2016 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2016
American Association of Physics Teachers
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