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Three charts on education levels by race and ethnicity

Black and Hispanic students had the lowest rates of enrolling in college and graduating four-year college within six years.

Updated on Thu, June 29, 2023 by the USAFacts Team

USAFacts’ 2023 State of the Union in Numbers features a detailed look at Americans’ highest levels of education. Included is this chart which uses Census Bureau and National Center of Education Statistics data to visualize educational attainment through the lens of race.

The chart on student educational attainment has three sections separated by race and ethnicity: The percentage who graduated high school in 2014, the percentage who enrolled in college that same year, and the percentage of that same cohort who graduated from two-year or four-year college programs.

Eighty-two percent of the 2010 freshman class graduated high school in 2014. Of the graduates, 56% enrolled in a college program and 29% went on to graduate college.

Key takeaway: Asian/Pacific Islander students had the largest high school graduation rates of any race/ethnicity in 2014, 89% followed by white students. Black students had the lowest graduation rates, with less than three-quarters of students starting high school in 2010 and graduating by 2014.

The middle of the chart covers the students who enrolled in a two-year or four-year college the following fall semester. In 2014, more than half of recent high school graduates enrolled in a four-year or two-year college program that fall.

Key takeaway: Asian and Pacific Islander students were the most likely group to graduate high school, enroll in college and graduate four-year from a college within six years.

What percentage of 2010 high school freshmen graduated in 2014 and subsequently graduated from a two- or four-year college? The chart below answers this question. It also highlights the percentage of college enrollees who graduated from four-year colleges within six years or graduated from two-year college within three years.

Key takeaway: Of the students enrolled in four-year colleges in 2014, 14% of Black students and 13% of Hispanic students graduated by 2020. The graduation rates of Asian/Pacific Islander students for two-year college and four-year college are higher than the averages of all students.

The State of the Union in Numbers has more explorations of educational outcomes. Dive into the data, then see USAFacts’ metrics on proficiency scores and per-student spending. Get the data directly in your inbox by signing up for our newsletter.

Explore more of USAFacts

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What are the U.S. education levels?

There are different levels of public education in the U.S. Find information about pre-school, elementary school, middle school, and high school. Learn how schools decide the grade and type of class for students new to the USA.

Education in the USA

In the United States, the law requires all children to go to school. Elementary, middle, and high school are all free if your child attends public school . The ages of the students for each grade can vary from state to state. 

U.S. education levels

In the USA, there are 12 grade levels after the first year of kindergarten. The four levels of education are:

• Preschool (early childhood education)

Elementary school

• Middle school

High school

Early childhood education

Early childhood education can mean different things. It refers to learning that happens before kindergarten. It is not required by law.

Early childhood education includes daycare and preschool . Ages can vary based on the place you choose to take your child. Daycare can start a few months after a child is born. Preschool can start as early as age 2. 

You usually have to pay for daycare and preschool. There are free preschool options for families with low income through the Head Start program .

Children in preschool learn how to be with other kids and get ready for kindergarten. 

Children begin elementary school with kindergarten (grade K) around age 5. The next year is grade 1 and it goes up each year to grade 5. They finish elementary school around age 10.

Children in elementary school usually learn different subjects from one teacher in a single classroom. They learn to develop writing and math skills, reading, critical thinking, and problem-solving.

Middle school (also called junior high school)

Students attending middle school are around age 11 to 13. It starts with grade 6 and ends with grade 8. Middle school students usually switch from classroom to classroom. They may have different teachers in one school day. 

In middle school, students learn:

• English (grammar, spelling, reading comprehension, and sentence structure)
• Mathematics (fractions, decimals, percents, solving equations)
• Sciences (earth science, basic biology, basic chemistry concepts)
• Social studies (civics, government, and basic economics)

In some communities, children will not switch schools to go to middle school. They will keep going to the same elementary school.

Students attending high school are around age 14 to 18. It starts with grade 9 and ends with grade 12. The classes are arranged by subjects. A student usually has different teachers throughout the day.

In high school, students learn:

• English (classic literature, essay writing, and critical analysis)
• Mathematics (algebra, geometry, calculus)
• Science (biology, chemistry, physics)
• Social studies (US history, world history, and civics) 

Some students can take advanced classes and prepare for work or college. High schools also have clubs, sports, work-study arrangements, and other activities. 

There are names for students in each grade:

• 9th grade: freshman 
• 10th grade: sophomore
• 11th grade: junior  
• 12th grade: senior

Secondary School

A secondary school is an alternative option to a high school. It covers grades 9th to 12th. It offers technical and vocational training, such as carpentry and automotive technology.

Post-high school education

After getting a high school diploma, students can go to college. Students need to find a college or university and learn the requirements. You will have to apply and pay tuition. If you need help paying for college or university, there are scholarships for immigrants and refugees .

Public colleges

Public colleges are also known as city colleges and state colleges. Cities and states fund public colleges. 

They have low-cost tuition for students who live in the city or state where the college is located. 

Private colleges

Private college requires paid tuition. It doesn’t depend on the government, it receives funding from donors. There are private colleges that could provide students with many financial aid programs. Private colleges tend to have a smaller number of students.

Community colleges

You can finish community college in 2 years and then transfer to a University. Many community colleges have affordable and low tuition. Students will earn a certificate or an associate degree. 

Some vocational-technical colleges are 2-year colleges.

Universities

Offer many career options; after 4 years of studies, students get a Bachelor’s Degree.

Universities have different colleges. Some universities offer professional degrees (law, medicine). These types of degrees need licenses and extra training.

Students who want to continue their education can apply for a Master’s degree or a Doctorate.

Class placement

Students can be split up by their learning level in different classes. This is more common in middle school and high school when students attend classes by subject with different teachers. Some levels of classes are harder and some are easier. 

Class placement can be decided based on:

• How well the student understands English or their test scores
• Parent/guardian recommendations
• Standardized test scores
• Willingness to complete challenging assignments
• Student interest or motivation
• Teacher or counselor recommendation
• Samples of student work

The names of the classes sometimes describe the level of difficulty. The names can be different depending on the school.

• Basic skills
• GTE (Gifted and talented education)
• Advanced Placement (AP)
• IB (International Baccalaureate)

Grade level placement for students new to the USA

Grade level placement means deciding which grade a student will start in when they move to the USA. 

Students may take some tests before the start of the school year or at the very beginning of the school year. The tests might be written or with an adult reading the questions to the student. It can be different depending on the school.

Many refugee students may have missed school while they were in camp or fleeing their country. They may be at different grade levels than a typical American student of the same age. Some students might be at a high-grade level but do not speak English yet. Those students may have trouble in harder classes until they learn English better. 

If you think your child is in the wrong grade, you can talk to the teacher, principal, or the school staff who tested and placed your child.

• Ask, “What was your reasoning?” The school can help you understand their decision.
• Explain why you think the placement is wrong. They may be able to change the placement if they agree with your reasons.

We aim to offer easy to understand information that is updated regularly. This information is not legal advice.

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Home > Statistical standards and methods > Concepts and definitions

• Classification

International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED)

Table of contents, related pages.

Education and Mismatch Indicators (EMI database)

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)

Introduction

The ISCED was designed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in the early 1970s to serve as an instrument suitable for assembling, compiling and presenting comparable indicators and statistics of education, both within countries and internationally. The original version of ISCED (ISCED-76) classified educational programmes by their content along two main axes: levels of education and fields of education. The cross-classification variables were maintained in the revised ISCED-97; however, the rules and criteria for allocating programmes to a level of education were clarified and tightened, and the fields of education were further elaborated. In 2011, a new classification ISCED 2011 was introduced; however, reporting according to ISCED-11 did not start until 2014.

Aggregate levels of education

Aggregate levels of education presented in ILOSTAT are based on the following concordances with ISCED-11 and ISCED-97.

X. No schooling 0. Early childhood education 1. Primary education 2. Lower secondary education 3. Upper secondary education 4. Post-secondary non-tertiary education 5. Short-cycle tertiary education 6. Bachelor’s or equivalent level 7. Master’s or equivalent level 8. Doctoral or equivalent level 9. Not elsewhere classified

X. No schooling 0. Pre-primary education 1. Primary education or first stage of basic education 2. Lower secondary or second stage of basic education 3. Upper secondary education 4. Post-secondary non-tertiary education 5. First stage of tertiary education (not leading directly to an advanced research qualification) 6. Second stage of tertiary education (leading to an advanced research qualification) ?. Level not stated

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The ILO Department of Statistics is the focal point to the United Nations on labour statistics. We develop international standards for better measurement of labour issues and enhanced international comparability; provide relevant, timely and comparable labour statistics; and help Member States develop and improve their labour statistics.

Global Education

By: Hannah Ritchie , Veronika Samborska , Natasha Ahuja , Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser

A good education offers individuals the opportunity to lead richer, more interesting lives. At a societal level, it creates opportunities for humanity to solve its pressing problems.

The world has gone through a dramatic transition over the last few centuries, from one where very few had any basic education to one where most people do. This is not only reflected in the inputs to education – enrollment and attendance – but also in outcomes, where literacy rates have greatly improved.

Getting children into school is also not enough. What they learn matters. There are large differences in educational outcomes : in low-income countries, most children cannot read by the end of primary school. These inequalities in education exacerbate poverty and existing inequalities in global incomes .

On this page, you can find all of our writing and data on global education.

Key insights on Global Education

The world has made substantial progress in increasing basic levels of education.

Access to education is now seen as a fundamental right – in many cases, it’s the government’s duty to provide it.

But formal education is a very recent phenomenon. In the chart, we see the share of the adult population – those older than 15 – that has received some basic education and those who haven’t.

In the early 1800s, fewer than 1 in 5 adults had some basic education. Education was a luxury; in all places, it was only available to a small elite.

But you can see that this share has grown dramatically, such that this ratio is now reversed. Less than 1 in 5 adults has not received any formal education.

This is reflected in literacy data , too: 200 years ago, very few could read and write. Now most adults have basic literacy skills.

What you should know about this data

• Basic education is defined as receiving some kind of formal primary, secondary, or tertiary (post-secondary) education.
• This indicator does not tell us how long a person received formal education. They could have received a full program of schooling, or may only have been in attendance for a short period. To account for such differences, researchers measure the mean years of schooling or the expected years of schooling .

Despite being in school, many children learn very little

International statistics often focus on attendance as the marker of educational progress.

However, being in school does not guarantee that a child receives high-quality education. In fact, in many countries, the data shows that children learn very little.

Just half – 48% – of the world’s children can read with comprehension by the end of primary school. It’s based on data collected over a 9-year period, with 2016 as the average year of collection.

This is shown in the chart, where we plot averages across countries with different income levels. 1

The situation in low-income countries is incredibly worrying, with 90% of children unable to read by that age.

This can be improved – even among high-income countries. The best-performing countries have rates as low as 2%. That’s more than four times lower than the average across high-income countries.

Making sure that every child gets to go to school is essential. But the world also needs to focus on what children learn once they’re in the classroom.

Millions of children learn only very little. How can the world provide a better education to the next generation?

Research suggests that many children – especially in the world’s poorest countries – learn only very little in school. What can we do to improve this?

• This data does not capture total literacy over someone’s lifetime. Many children will learn to read eventually, even if they cannot read by the end of primary school. However, this means they are in a constant state of “catching up” and will leave formal education far behind where they could be.

Children across the world receive very different amounts of quality learning

There are still significant inequalities in the amount of education children get across the world.

This can be measured as the total number of years that children spend in school. However, researchers can also adjust for the quality of education to estimate how many years of quality learning they receive. This is done using an indicator called “learning-adjusted years of schooling”.

On the map, you see vast differences across the world.

In many of the world’s poorest countries, children receive less than three years of learning-adjusted schooling. In most rich countries, this is more than 10 years.

Across most countries in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa – where the largest share of children live – the average years of quality schooling are less than 7.

• Learning-adjusted years of schooling merge the quantity and quality of education into one metric, accounting for the fact that similar durations of schooling can yield different learning outcomes.
• Learning-adjusted years is computed by adjusting the expected years of school based on the quality of learning, as measured by the harmonized test scores from various international student achievement testing programs. The adjustment involves multiplying the expected years of school by the ratio of the most recent harmonized test score to 625. Here, 625 signifies advanced attainment on the TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) test, with 300 representing minimal attainment. These scores are measured in TIMSS-equivalent units.

Hundreds of millions of children worldwide do not go to school

While most children worldwide get the opportunity to go to school, hundreds of millions still don’t.

In the chart, we see the number of children who aren’t in school across primary and secondary education.

This number was around 244 million in 2023.

Many children who attend primary school drop out and do not attend secondary school. That means many more children or adolescents are missing from secondary school than primary education.

Access to basic education: almost 60 million children of primary school age are not in school

The world has made a lot of progress in recent generations, but millions of children are still not in school.

The gender gap in school attendance has closed across most of the world

Globally, until recently, boys were more likely to attend school than girls. The world has focused on closing this gap to ensure every child gets the opportunity to go to school.

Today, these gender gaps have largely disappeared. In the chart, we see the difference in the global enrollment rates for primary, secondary, and tertiary (post-secondary) education. The share of children who complete primary school is also shown.

We see these lines converging over time, and recently they met: rates between boys and girls are the same.

For tertiary education, young women are now more likely than young men to be enrolled.

While the differences are small globally, there are some countries where the differences are still large: girls in Afghanistan, for example, are much less likely to go to school than boys.

Research & Writing

Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this.

Access to basic education: almost 60 million children of primary school age are not in school, interactive charts on global education.

This data comes from a paper by João Pedro Azevedo et al.

João Pedro Azevedo, Diana Goldemberg, Silvia Montoya, Reema Nayar, Halsey Rogers, Jaime Saavedra, Brian William Stacy (2021) – “ Will Every Child Be Able to Read by 2030? Why Eliminating Learning Poverty Will Be Harder Than You Think, and What to Do About It .” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 9588, March 2021.

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International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED)

The world's education systems vary widely in terms of structure and curricular content. Consequently, it can be difficult to compare national education systems with those of other countries or to benchmark progress towards national and international goals. 

The International Standard Classification of Education ( ISCED 2011 ) provides a comprehensive framework for organising education programmes and qualification by applying uniform and internationally agreed definitions to facilitate comparisons of education systems across countries. ISCED is a widely-used a global reference classification for education systems that is maintained and periodically revised by the UIS in consultation with Member States and other international and regional organizations. ISCED 2011 is the second major revision of this classification (initially developed in the 1970s and revised in 1997 ). It was adopted by the UNESCO General Conference in November 2011.

ISCED is essential for collecting and analysing cross-nationally comparable education statistics. The accompanying ISCED Fields of Education and Training 2013 ( ISCED-F ) classifies education programmes and related qualifications by fields of study according to the broad domain, branch or area of content covered. .

The ISCED 2011 Operational Manual  provides further guidelines for classifying national education programmes and related qualifications according to ISCED 2011.  

The UIS works closely with Member States and its data collection partners (such as OECD and Eurostat) to map education systems and collect data according to the ISCED classification. National ISCED mappings are published on our page devoted to ISCED mappings .

International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 2011

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International Standard Classification of Education: Fields of Education and Training 2013 (ISCED-F 2013) – Detailed Field Descriptions

• Download (575.17 KB)

ISCED Fields of Education and Training 2013 (ISCED-F 2013): Manual to Accompany the International Standard Classification of Education 2011

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