Riley School, Janet Beyersdorfer

Math Trail 2001--Students and Classes

Public schools in Illinois are required to provide an annual "School Report Card" to parents and others upon request. The report card includes information about the school in your attendance area and the district at large. State test scores, staffing and financial indicators are based on data for all public schools, including those that are special-purpose. All other indicators are based on data from regular public schools only. Data from private schools are not included in the Report Card.

Generally, elementary districts are grades pre-kindergarten through eight; high schools districts have grades nine through twelve, and unit districts have grades pre-kindergarten through twelve. 

Answers to the math problems at the end of the page.

Racial/Ethnic Background/Total Enrollment

The major racial-ethnic groups in Illinois public schools are White non-Hispanic, Black non-Hispanic, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander and Native American (American Indian/Alaskan Native). Enrollments were reported as of September 30,1999.

Math Problem 1:

Calculate the number of children in the school who are White.

Hint: Find the total percentage of the White racial ethnic group for the school. Round the White percentage to the nearest percent. Now find the total enrollment and find 25% of it. You must multiply to find the final answer.

Time Devoted to Teaching Core Subjects

Time devoted to the teaching of core subjects is the average number of minutes of instruction per 5-day school week in each subject area divided by 5. English includes all language arts courses.

Math Problem 2: If third graders have 173 minutes for English per day, how many days are spent in class before they have 762 minutes of English instruction?

Hint: There are several math operations you could use to solve this problem. You can try either addition or multiplication but division will work also. Divide the total of minutes by number of minutes per day.

 Average Class Size

Average class size is the grade's total enrollment divided by the number of classes for that grade. It is reported for the first school day in May.

Math Problem 3:

Grades kindergarten, one, and three are going on a field trip at school. Kindergarten has three classes, Grade one has four classes and grade three has five classes. One bus holds forty-eight children. How many buses do they need?

Hint: Calculate how many children are in grades kindergarten, one and three. You have to multiply the number of classes by the number of the average students in each class. Remember that all children need a seat on the bus.

 Attendance, Mobility and Chronic Truancy

A perfect attendance rate (100%) means that all students attended school every day.

The student mobility rate is based on the number of students who enroll in or leave a school during the school year. Students are counted each time they transfer out or transfer in.

Chronic truants are students who were absent from school without valid cause for 18 or more of the last 180 school days.

Math Problem 4:

The state of Illinois has 45,109 chronic truants. If 25 states including Illinois have the same number, and the other 25 have a quarter of the 45,109 chronic truants of the first 25 states. If that were true, how many chronic truants would the United States have?

Hint: Calculate the number of chronic truants in the first group of 25 states. Then divide 45,109 by 4 to get the quarter of the chronic truants for the second group. After that, add both numbers together to get the number of chronic truants in the U.S.A.

Answers:

Answer #1: 402 Whites

Answer #2: 5 days

Answer #3: six buses

Answer: #4 1,139,002 chronic truants

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