Student Travel Statistics: Visiting Museums, Galleries and Historical Sites

The following story provided by SYTA e-newsletter provides some fascinating statistics into student travel:

Department of Education Reports Field Trip Facts by the Numbers
A new report from the Department of Education includes these interesting facts:

In 2012, twenty-one percent of K-12 students visited an art gallery, a museum, or a historical site “in the past month.” Not surprisingly, children from richer families, who attend secular private schools, or who have parents with higher educational attainment were significantly more likely to visit museums. 

Nineteen percent of K-12 students visited a zoo or aquarium, but the children of poorer families and non-English speakers were actually more likely than other students to visit these kinds of museums, which have lower barriers to participation.

By comparison, however, thirty-nine percent of the students visited a public library and fifty-two percent attended a sporting/athletic event in the past month. (Technically, all of these numbers reflect the “percentage of students in kindergarten through grade twelve whose parents reported [student] participation in various activities.”) 

The latest estimate for the number of homeschoolers in the United States (as of the 2011-12 school year) is 3.4% of all students age 5-17 (K-12) or 1.77 million.

Click here for more details. For some historical comparisons to visitation rates in the past, check out this recent blog post by IMLS statistician Deanna Swann.