Hurricane Katrina

To keep up on disaster relief efforts in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida go to these web sites:

• CNN Special Report: Hurricane Season
• WWLTV Katrina Blog
• New Orleans Times-Picayune
  
• National Hurricane Center/Tropical Prediction Center
• Yahoo! News Full Coverage of Hurricane Katrina
• New Orleans by satellite (pre-Katrina)
  
• The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale
• Storm Names

SWOSU is collecting donations for Hurricane Katrina victims.

Back to School Data

The U.S. Census Bureau released a special statistical fact sheet regarding back to school activities.

• 7 million school children speak Spanish at home
• The average nation tuition for one year at a college and university is $10,660
• In 2004, $6 million was spent on back to school shopping
• 54.6 million is the projected number of students to be enrolled in the nation's elementary and high schools this fall

National Archives Gets a New Website

The National Archives and Records Administration recently changed the appearance and address of their website to http://www.archives.gov/.

To search the collections of the National Archives use the Archival Research Catalog and the Access to Archival Databases.

Also, America's Historical Documents continues to provide access to the country's most influencial and famous written texts such as, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Bill of Rights, and the Emancipation Proclaimation.

2005 KIDS COUNT Data Book Released

The 16th annual KIDS COUNT Data Book released July 27 reports that national trends in child well-being are no longer improving in the rapid and sustained way they did in the late 1990s. Among the negative trends: the number of children who live with parents facing persistent unemployment grew to 4 million, an increase of more than 1 million since 2000.

Teens Using the Internet in Record Numbers

The report compiled for the Pew Internet & American Life Project found 87% of those aged 12 to 17, now use the Internet. That amounts to about 21 million youth who use the Internet, up from roughly 17 million in 2000. Approximately, 11 million teens go online daily, compared to about 7 million in 2000.

For the full report, read Teens and Technology: Youth are Leading the Transition to a Fully Wired and Mobile Nation.

Nation's Report Card 2004

Recently, the National Center for Education Statistics released a new update to the Nation's Report Card, Long Term Trend Assessment Results 2004. This source data covers student performance in reading from 1971 to 2004 and student performance in mathematics from 1973 to 2004. Results are reported in three ways: by scale scores, by selected percentiles, and by percentage of students performing at or above each of five performance levels. The reading and mathematics long-term trend assessments refer to different student populations and measure different subject area skills from the main NAEP assessments.