Education System In The Us

I'm looking for a link to a short overview of the general education system in the US.

Any help appreciated

thanks Benno :)

Do you have any specific interests?

Children start mandatory school at 5 (kindergarten) and continue until Grade 12. They can legally "drop out" at 16 years of age, which is roughly Grade 10.

Things are done differently depending on where you live.

Usually it is a 3 school process:
K-6-elementary
7-8- junior high or 6-8-middle school
9-12- high school


Some places have 2 semesters with a long summer break, others have a more balanced "trimester" set up.

Everyone has access to public school, people who wish can pay send their children to "private" school.

The public schools are financed through property tax on the local residents.

Thank you for your reply Hobbes, Im interested in general informaiton about education in america.

Im going to graduate this year from high school and for the final exam in english, one topic (?) is the american education system.
Now we are supposed to outline all the topics on 1-2 pages each. I got the british governmental system and american education. For the first I found great information on bitannica.com however Im still looking for more information on the school system in the US.

Your reply was a good starting point to give me a general overview but i need more in-depth information.
It should be enough that I can talk about it for 10-15 minutes in case I get this topic to my oral exam.

Thanks Benno :)

Just some links I found for you:

http://www.ed.gov/Speeches/02-1999/990216.html
http://www.ed.gov/index.jhtml
http://www.newsbatch.com/education.htm
http://www.iusb.edu/~journal/1998/Paper5.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/11/26/...ain530872.shtml
http://nclb.ecs.org/nclb/
http://nochildleft.com/
http://www.reading.org/focus/nclb.html
http://www.ncpa.org/iss/edu/

:ninja:

Thanks a lot MagicNakor some great links there :)