Incorporating the U.S. Census Into Classroom Instruction
This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . The decennial tradition, a time when our country takes an official “count” of its population, has arrived! The census is used for apportionment (a process to determine the number of seats each state has in the U.S. House of Representatives). It is also used to distribute billions in federal funds to local communities. The census has been conducted every 10 years since the first one in 1790. Back then, a simple six-question survey was used to count approximately 3.9 million Americans living in our young country. Fast forward to current day, and the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the 2020 count will gather statistics for our country’s growing population of around 330 million people in more than 140 million housing units. The statistics collected will influence a wide variety of decisions for years to come. Like most school principals around the country, earlier this year I received a package in the mail from t...