Stats That Stick: July 11, 2012

Here at High School Soup, we’re fans of the stickiest stats. Those pieces of data you just cannot get out of your brain. Here are three from the past week we’re still thinking about.

Percentage of new jobs created in the past year that workers over 55 have taken: 58%.
Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, offered this statistic to The Huffington Post to illustrate the fact that younger workers are having trouble finding gainful employment even as jobs are being added to the economy. Men are also picking up new jobs more frequently than women are.

Number of teachers graduated by the University of Phoenix in 2010: 6,721.
Alexander Russo’s This Week in Education blog has a spreadsheet of the largest producers of teachers in 2010. The University of Phoenix, the top producer on the list, led the next highest institution by just under 1,800 teachers. The next institution on the list, Walden University, is also an online school.

Number of weeks ahead of schedule a Denver high school is starting school this year: 7.
Denver’s Manual High School was the first school to acquire “innovation status” in exchange for exemption from some district requirements. One way that the school is innovating is by adding more learning time and opportunities experiential learning. The school is adding 39 days to the school calendar as well as an additional hour each day. 25 of these additional days will go toward off-campus experiential learning activities that will cost students’ families no additional funds.