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. The school census figures being released Friday were the first to collect information on the national origin of students' families, said Amie Jamieson of the Census Bureau. Researchers have asked such questions since 1994, but have never gathered the results in a report, she said.
Schools are try 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. In Kentucky, the state's largest school district is struggling to keep pace with an influx of immigrant students. The Jefferson County 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. 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.