Grades K-12: By the numbers

• Story Highlights
• 55 million K-12 students attend U.S. schools; projection: 60.4 million by 2017
  
• Dropout rate has fallen from 14.1 percent in 1980 to 8.7 percent in 2007
  
• Public school teachers make annual average of $50,816 -- up 3 percent from 1996
  
• '04: 17 percent of teachers left their schools; 9 percent of those stopped teaching