Simone Carpenter
Where have over a million students gone? And how can we get them back into our public school systems?
After increasing every year from 1990 to 2019, reaching a peak of 50.8 million students, public school enrollment fell dramatically in 2020 as a result of the pandemic; while enrollment rebounded somewhat in 2022, enrollment decreased by 1.2 million students from 2019 to 2022 overall.1 Because most districts’ funding is based in part on the number of students enrolled, these declines in enrollment are creating significant financial pressure for our public schools. In California, for example, each student equates to, at minimum, over $10,000 in state funding for the 2023-24 school year. A loss of just 100 students in that school year means over a million fewer dollars in revenue.2
Some public school enrollment losses since the pandemic can be attributed to population changes – birth rates have declined and immigration has slowed. But changing attitudes among families towards traditional schools, the rise of new education options, and increased competition have also been changing the enrollment landscape. Charter schools have increased their share of the enrollment pie, as have private alternatives and homeschooling. Much interesting research is revealing more detail about where students are going and which types of communities and which grade levels are most affected, but the urgent questions are why are students and families leaving, and how do we get students back to our public schools?
Targeted Analyses Yield Insights
While understanding broader trends helps put district enrollment declines in context, the severity and the reasons for the declines in enrollment vary from district to district. In the District Management Group’s experience, the challenges are extremely local, even varying within the bounds of a single school district. The challenge is strategic in nature, not simply a matter of signage and awareness. Yard signs, billboards, and door knockers aren’t the answer.
In our experience working with districts, it is a rich quantitative and qualitative analysis of a district’s enrollment trends that yields actionable insights that can improve enrollment numbers. In partnering with districts in this work, District Management Group (DMG) conducts (1) a detailed analysis of shifts in community and school demographics and (2) a series of focus groups, interviews, and surveys to gain broad-based stakeholder input. All of this information and data is collected and analyzed to answer the following key questions:
How is district enrollment affected by the changes in the student and general populations of the district communities?
Who are the competitors?
Why are families enrolling or disenrolling?
Where are the students going?
Moving Forward in Response to Finding
With these findings in hand, District Management Group facilitates a workshop with key stakeholders to help define the district’s unique value proposition and identify areas where the district may need to work to more clearly differentiate its offerings.
Specifically, we explore:
What district strengths can you leverage to attract more students?
What actions can be taken to provide greater differentiation and make the district more responsive to student and family needs and wants.
How do you articulate and communicate the district’s unique value proposition to students and families?
Rich and challenging discussions to clearly identify and articulate the district’s strengths/value proposition then allow the district to develop a strategic enrollment and communication plan specific to the district and sometimes specific to certain schools. DMG’s approach is data-driven – not based on assumptions about why students are leaving, but instead based on quantitative and qualitative data. In working with dozens of districts since the pandemic, these in-depth analyses and the development of clear value propositions have helped districts develop specific, targeted plans of action, resulting in increased enrollment.
Actionable Solutions from Insightful Analyses: Two District Examples
In one district, DMG found that while overall enrollment was relatively flat, the district was losing market share, meaning there were more families moving into the district but making alternative choices for their children’s education. In this district, the largest growth over that time was in homeschooling. DMG’s work gathering qualitative data revealed that misinformation about the curriculum was spreading rapidly through the community. As a result, the district worked to provide accurate information to families, both going through their traditional channels, but also through community leaders and events trusted by families, both inside and outside the district.
In another district, families were opting for neighboring public charter schools at higher and higher rates. Through DMG’s analysis, they found that most families who leave the district for charter schools left between 5th and 6th grade, a critical transition to middle school. Many families had concerns over the size of the district’s middle schools, especially in comparison to the district’s smaller elementary buildings which felt more familiar and comfortable. As a result of these findings, the district worked to develop a peer mentoring program to connect students in elementary schools to students in their middle schools. This helped build familiarity with the buildings and community, excitement around attending the district middle schools, and trust for families that their child would be safe and welcomed at their 6th grade school.
