We completed our Nationwide Survey of High School Physics during the 2018–19 academic year. Over the next several months, we will be looking at results from that survey. This month we will look at the availability of high school physics.
There are over 20,000 schools with at least three students enrolled in grade 12 in the U.S. This total includes both public and private schools. About one-third of these schools are rather small (fewer than 50 students in grade 12), and these schools account for less than 10% of all students in grade 12 in the U.S. Examining the proportion of schools offering physics would be misleading when compared to the proportion of high school seniors enrolled in schools offering physics. Schools with fewer seniors are less likely to offer physics, but that impacts fewer students.
Not only do we consider the size of the school, we also look at...