Comparison of Number of Teams by State to K12 Public School Enrollment, 2019

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Comparison of Number of Teams by State to K12 Public School Enrollment, 2019

Post by Unome »

Exactly as the title says:
enrollment-teams-comparison-2019.png
enrollment-teams-comparison-2019.png (26.57 KiB) Viewed 2034 times
Enrollment data from NCES

Thought this might be interesting data to look at. I used 2019 because it's the latest year with complete enrollment data and complete teams data (there were major fluctuations due to Covid state to state in 2020 in the latter depending on how any given state chose to report their data). I couldn't get any better data than K12 public school enrollment - I had hoped for at least secondary school data - but in general, you can assume that total secondary school enrollment (counting non-public schools) is around 55% to 65% of these numbers, and correspondingly the ratio goes up by around 50% to 80%. If it helps in interpretation, we can estimate that in the US overall, approximately 0.35% to 0.4% of secondary school students participated in Science Olympiad in 2019.

Looking at the state-by-state breakdown, many of the numbers will be as expected to people familiar with the number of teams by state patterns. North Dakota and Delaware are quite predictably at the top of the list, though I wasn't expecting to see Montana so high up. Among the large states, North Carolina and Michigan are substantially above the national average, while Texas and Florida are substantially below it. Do remember that there are many potential reasons why a state might be high or low in this ranking.

K12 pub. enr.,# teams,State,/100k
267976,9,West Virginia,3.4
5433471,240,Texas,4.4
495291,27,Arkansas,5.5
698891,41,Oklahoma,5.9
1141511,70,Arizona,6.1
780882,49,South Carolina,6.3
711783,47,Louisiana,6.6
609507,41,Oregon,6.7
514833,37,Iowa,7.2
492640,38,Nevada,7.7
138975,11,South Dakota,7.9
471298,41,Mississippi,8.7
87074,8,Vermont,9.2
2846444,265,Florida,9.3
1400069,131,New Jersey,9.4
138405,14,D.C.,10.1
677031,72,Utah,10.6
310522,34,Idaho,10.9
889304,99,Minnesota,11.1
962297,111,Massachusetts,11.5
1289367,157,Virginia,12.2
180461,22,Maine,12.2
6272734,841,California,13.4
526634,72,Connecticut,13.7
1123736,157,Washington,14.0
178515,25,New Hampshire,14.0
896827,126,Maryland,14.0
911536,129,Colorado,14.2
739716,112,Alabama,15.1
50694061,7874,USA Overall,15.5
1767202,281,Georgia,15.9
94313,15,Wyoming,15.9
859333,152,Wisconsin,17.7
1695762,306,Ohio,18.0
677821,123,Kentucky,18.1
130963,24,Alaska,18.3
1055706,194,Indiana,18.4
1007624,192,Tennessee,19.1
1730757,334,Pennsylvania,19.3
1982327,383,Illinois,19.3
913441,201,Missouri,22.0
2700833,686,New York,25.4
497733,128,Kansas,25.7
333537,93,New Mexico,27.9
326392,108,Nebraska,33.1
1504194,514,Michigan,34.2
143436,52,Rhode Island,36.3
181278,68,Hawaii,37.5
1552497,636,North Carolina,41.0
148844,117,Montana,78.6
88493,106,Delaware,119.8
113845,141,North Dakota,123.9
These users thanked the author Unome for the post (total 5):
Adi1008 (May 29th, 2023, 12:35 pm) • pumptato-cat (May 29th, 2023, 2:34 pm) • jaspattack (May 29th, 2023, 2:37 pm) • bernard (May 29th, 2023, 4:08 pm) • Jehosaphat (May 31st, 2023, 12:24 pm)
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Re: Comparison of Number of Teams by State to K12 Public School Enrollment, 2019

Post by Jehosaphat »

That's some pretty interesting data. I always thought that Michigan had a strong Scioly culture but I didn't realize that we were that high in terms of popularity
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Re: Comparison of Number of Teams by State to K12 Public School Enrollment, 2019

Post by onshape »

Yeah, it's quite interesting. Here in Virginia (pretty far down the list) I feel like some schools just do Scioly to sustain their teams. Hopefully that's changing, as we only need a few more teams to send two teams to nationals every year. North Dakota makes sense when you compare it to the state size. Thanks for sharing!
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Re: Comparison of Number of Teams by State to K12 Public School Enrollment, 2019

Post by knightmoves »

Interesting plot. I wonder how the average size of a school varies between states? North Dakota and Montana are pretty sparsely populated, so I'd assume that schools would be smaller in size than states with big urban/suburban areas. I might register one team for a school of 300 people, but probably wouldn't register 10 teams from a school of 3000 people.
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Re: Comparison of Number of Teams by State to K12 Public School Enrollment, 2019

Post by anagene »

How about a post-COVID calculation.for comparison?
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Re: Comparison of Number of Teams by State to K12 Public School Enrollment, 2019

Post by randomdogonapc »

Wow, I thought Ohio would be a bit higher, considering it’s so competitive here. Maybe there’s not a ton of teams but just a ton of gifted kids that are crazy smart and also really don’t like me lol
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Re: Comparison of Number of Teams by State to K12 Public School Enrollment, 2019

Post by onshape »

randomdogonapc wrote: July 17th, 2023, 3:31 am Wow, I thought Ohio would be a bit higher, considering it’s so competitive here. Maybe there’s not a ton of teams but just a ton of gifted kids that are crazy smart and also really don’t like me lol
Ohio's a big state, what do you expect?
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Re: Comparison of Number of Teams by State to K12 Public School Enrollment, 2019

Post by Unome »

randomdogonapc wrote: July 17th, 2023, 3:31 am Wow, I thought Ohio would be a bit higher, considering it’s so competitive here. Maybe there’s not a ton of teams but just a ton of gifted kids that are crazy smart and also really don’t like me lol
It's something that has often been a topic of discussion. I personally believe the strong invitational culture is a contributor, particularly as it was much the same 10 years ago as it was today, at a time when invitationals were less developed.
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