Late last month, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) published the enrollment count for the 2023-24 school year. The report showed that 9 of the top 10 and 38 of the 50 largest districts have lost students since 2019-20, while 31 of the 50 largest districts lost students between the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 school years.
All in all, the loss amounts to a 2.5% drop between fall 2019 and fall 2023. Schools at the pre-K-8 grade level showed the greatest declines where enrollment dropped by 4.5% over the four-year period.
And the exodus is ongoing. According to the latest federal estimates, public schools are projected to lose 2.7 million students, for a 5.5% decline, from 2022 to 2031. That includes a loss of 1.8 million students in pre-K-8, a 5.4% loss, and 883,000 students in grades 9-12, a 5.7% decline.
On a similar note, the Fordham Institute recently reported that nearly 1 in 12 public schools nationwide saw student enrollment declines of about 20% since the year before the COVID-19 pandemic began. Chronically low-performing schools were hit particularly hard. According to the study, they were more than twice as likely to have sizable enrollment drops compared to other public schools.
It follows that the loss of students in the pre-K-12 sector is a harbinger of what’s to come in higher education. In early January, the Hechinger Report disclosed that the public university system is struggling to reduce a deep deficit that threatens to “permanently shutter several campuses after dramatic drop-offs in enrollment and revenue. While much attention has been focused on how enrollment declines are putting private, nonprofit colleges out of business at an accelerating rate—at least 17 of them in 2024—public universities and colleges face their own existential crises.
“State institutions nationwide are being merged, and campuses shut down, many of them in areas where there is already little access to higher education.”
The question then becomes, “Why are people shunning public schools?”
Covid certainly put a hit on the system, as do declining birthrates, but there is another critical factor. An April report from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation, which surveyed more than 1,000 Gen Z students between the ages of 12 and 18, found that just 48% of those enrolled in middle or high school felt motivated to go to school. Only half said they do something interesting in school every day. Similarly, a new EdChoice survey finds that 64% of teens said school is boring, and 30% feel it is a waste of time.
The general public isn’t too happy with the current state of government-run schools either. A just-released poll from the Pew Research Center reveals that 51% of Americans say K-12 education is on the wrong track, with 69% saying that it’s because “core academic subjects, like reading, math, science, and social studies” are being neglected. Additionally, 54% say teachers are “bringing their personal, political, and social views into the classroom.”
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