Education by the Numbers is an extensive collection of statistics, reports and tools related to the condition of American education from primary to post-secondary levels beginning with 1636, the founding of Harvard College. Here, you may search for information about schools and locations including, but certainly not limited to:

• Enrollment/student statistics
• Faculty
• Expenditures and income
• Level of financial support from local, state, and federal governments
• Number of library volumes
• Graduation rates
• Basic and programmatic research activity
• State and federal legislation

Historians, students, and policy analysts have long relied on historical statistics collected by government agencies and educational institutions in order to identify patterns and quantify hypotheses related to American education. Henry Barnard’s American journal of education (1856 – 1882), the Report of the Commissioner of Education (1868 – 1916), and the Biennial Survey of Education in the United States(1918 – 1958), are widely regarded as the most complete sources of these statistics. While many of these volumes are now available through great digital libraries such as HathiTrust and Archive.org, a user may only view and perhaps download static scanned images.

Education by the Numbers solves the problems of accessibility and usability by assembling data from the aforementioned volumes, as well as from the Digest of Educational Statistics, renamed the Digest of Education Statistics in 1975 (1962 – present) and a vast selection of previously unavailable archival sources.

EBN’s data and tools enable you to answer an extensive array of political, social, and economic questions in order to understand the past and shape future education policy.