Why Are Public Schools Losing Students?
Image: Suharu Ogawa/NPR
Enrollment in LA public schools is expected to plunge by nearly 30% over the next decade, according to a presentation outlined Tuesday to the city’s Board of Education.
🔢 By the numbers... After reaching a peak of 737,000 students two decades ago, LA Unified School District has declined over the years to about 430,000 K-12th graders currently.
- Enrollment is projected to drop ~3.6% annually to reach 309,000 over the next nine years, with declines also expected in LA County (19%) and California as a whole (9%).
🏫📉 The big picture: US public school enrollment is projected to decline 5+% from now until the end of the decade, after falling 3% in the first year of the pandemic, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
- NYC, the second-largest US public school district, was projected to lose 7% of its enrollment by 2027 before 5% of its students left over the past two years.
- In Chicago, the third-largest district, enrollment has been steadily declining for two decades with no signs of slowing.
🤔 What’s going on?... An overriding explanation has yet to emerge, but experts have several theories (which aren’t mutually exclusive):
- US birth rates have declined by almost 20% over the past decade-and-a-half.
- Charter school enrollment rates have rapidly increased, especially during the pandemic.
- Some parents became so fed up with Covid restrictions that they started home-schooling their children or sending them to private schools.
- Some parents became so overwhelmed by pandemic-related job losses or school closures that their children simply dropped out.
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From the Left
- Some commentators argue that lawmakers’ response to a drop in enrollment should not be to close schools, if they can avoid it, since schools often serve as de-facto community centers for the surrounding area.
- Others suggest that Democrats need schools to get back to normal in terms of Covid restrictions and closures, which have shown to be wildly unpopular with a majority of parents.
“Where have all the children gone? California’s public school enrollment is down by 110,000 students this year, continuing a five-year decline, and no one is sure why or what to do about it.
Possible contributing factors include families moving out of state, students switching to private schools or homeschooling; a decrease in immigration to the U.S. and a lower birth rate. Saddest of all, there might be kids who gave up on their education after the COVID-19 pandemic school closures…
The simplest solution to plunging enrollment may be to shutter schools where enrollment is too low. But that’s not necessarily the smartest approach. In many California neighborhoods the local school acts as a community center, opening its doors to residents for meetings, voting and health or other services.
A new study finds that when a school closes in a low-income Black neighborhood the area gentrifies, with more affluent people moving in. It’s an apparent study in racism: Even an excellent, predominantly Black school is seen by outsiders as a deterrent to moving into a neighborhood, not an asset. When a neighborhood school closes, Black families end up losing more than the neighborhood focal point.
In other words, declining enrollment isn’t just a school problem; it can destabilize neighborhoods…
It’s unlikely that all school closings can be avoided. There’s a point at which there are too few students to justify keeping a campus open. In those cases, the state could provide grants to turn those campuses into community centers with social services and recreational offerings. Free busing has to be offered to all displaced students.
But so far, the state isn’t moving swiftly or decisively enough to prevent that scenario. Temporary fixes won’t turn schools around. The state needs to get ahead of this problem, not struggle to keep up.”
“Democrats need to take this coming onslaught seriously. The school choice movement is old — it’s often dated back to a 1955 essay by Milton Friedman. But Covid has created fertile ground for a renewed push.
As many have pointed out, the reason education was such an incendiary issue in the Virginia governor’s race likely had less to do with critical race theory than with parent fury over the drawn-out nightmare of online school. Because America’s response to Covid was so politically polarized, school shutdowns were longest in blue states, and Virginia’s was especially severe; only six states had fewer in-person days last year…
Across the country, the shutdowns have contributed to an exodus from public schools… Because school budgets are partly dependent on head counts, these missing students could lead to severe cuts, making public schools even less attractive.
In an environment like this, Republican proposals to subsidize private school tuition are likely to be received gratefully by many parents. It’s a perilous situation for Democrats, the party of public schools. If they want to stanch the bleeding, they should treat the rollout of the children’s Covid vaccine as an opportunity to make public schools feel lively and joyful again.
Public schools may finally be open across the country, but in many districts, things are far from normal… Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, wants to see outdoor masking ended as a first step toward unwinding other Covid restrictions…
Now Democrats have a choice. They can repair the public schools, or watch [Republicans] destroy them.”
From the Right
- Some commentators argue that the drop in public school enrollment is largely parents objecting to the “woke” agenda they say is being pushed by many schools in left-leaning areas.
- Others contend that more students attending charter schools should be seen as a good thing, and call out President Biden for his administration’s recent rules restricting federal funding for charters.
“Parents are yanking their kids from left-wing public schools at an increasing rate and the problem will likely worsen in the country's most progressive cities.
After more than a year of hysterical COVID protocols that were clearly not based in science or data, progressive educators switched their focus to pushing dangerous and confusing woke curricula on captive young audiences. But the indoctrination agenda is backfiring…
Even when it was clear remote learning was hurting children considerably more than COVID ever could, teachers' unions still demanded students be kept in masks or continue to stay home. Parents had had enough.
The 2020-2021 school year saw an astonishing 3 percent of pupils leave their public schools, with the largest number coming from the younger grades. This represents roughly 1.5 million students nationwide. Now, thanks to newly released data, we're seeing the exact numbers on the local level. They're not pretty…
The best way to attract parents back to public schools is to abandon the woke agenda. But educators don't seem willing to let up…
Parents were so disgusted that they recalled activist board members in San Francisco, gave two board seats to conservatives in Houston, voted for a Republican takeover of the Waukesha, Wisconsin, School Board and delivered a decisive win to Glenn Youngkin in Virginia's gubernatorial race.
Rather than learn from these defeats—or just listen to the concerns of parents—progressive educators continue to claim they're being censored from teaching "truths," or claim the criticism is a Fox News-inspired canard.
Teachers can complain all they want, but parents aren't buying it. And if the Left continues to ignore the righteous concerns of parents, the school budget realities and political consequences will only get worse.”
“If the national performance rankings of every high school in the nation, published this week by U.S. News, proves anything, it is that charter schools have contributed mightily to education in the United States.
That makes President Joe Biden’s attack on them, through proposed new rules by his Department of Education, a curious thing. He would make it harder for parents to send their children to schools that might help their children succeed…
Charters are public schools that have the freedom to employ teaching methods different from those in traditional private schools. They are held to performance standards set out in their charters…
In recent years, Democrats — especially those in the more progressive wing of the party — have begun to attack. A report in The Hill said their rationale varies from saying charters are bad for racial integration, to that they rob regular schools of funding or are not accountable.
And now, the Department of Education is proposing rules that set up almost impossible standards for charters to qualify for federal Charter School Program funding. Among other things, the schools must demonstrate that they serve a diverse population, which could penalize inner-city charters for not having white students, and they must show that they meet an unmet demand by regular public schools — defined as showing evidence that other schools are overcrowded. The new rules fill 13 pages…
The road to better schools will benefit from more, not less, choices.”
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