School districts that returned to in-person instruction quickly saw enrollments rebound, while those that stayed remote longest saw further declines.
Districts that returned to in-person instruction quickly saw enrollments rebound, while those that stayed remote longest saw increasing declines.
T he nation’s public schools suffered unprecedented enrollment declines in the 2020–21 school year, losing more than one in 40 K–12 students, and representing median potential revenue losses of over $400,000 when all but the smallest school districts are considered. Today, the two outstanding questions for schools across the nation are: Will students return to public schools? And if not, why not?
As enrollment data for this year are sporadically released state by state, a national picture is elusive. Longer-term prospects for public schools would look better if the nation ended up more like Alabama, where enrollment rebounded, than New York, where many more K–12 students left again this year.
After collecting enrollment data from 46 states for the American Enterprise Institute’s Return to Learn Tracker, I find that the future looks bleak for many districts, and it is directly related to their pandemic response. Across the nation, average public-school enrollment fell slightly this year, for a net two-year decline of 2.8 percent. But averages lie, because they hide large differences underneath: Districts that returned to in-person instruction quickly saw enrollments rebound, while those that stayed remote longest saw increasing declines.
Dividing 7,700 districts into three categories — those that had the most remote instruction in 2020–21, those that offered the most time in-person, and those in between — reveals divergent enrollment patterns. After losing about 3 percent of students in 2021, the most remote districts lost an additional 1.2 percent this year, for a two-year slide of 4.4 percent — about one in 22 students. The most in-person districts dropped about 2 percent in 2021 but grew by 0.9 percent this year, for a much smaller net loss of 1percent — about one in 93 students. The trends are clear: Public-school enrollments are recovering in the districts that returned to in-person instruction more quickly.
Enrollment declines varied because of many factors, especially grade level, but a rapid return to in-person learning consistently buffered student losses. For instance, kindergarten saw larger declines than did other grades, but the most remote districts lost four times the percentage that the most in-person districts did. Overall enrollment declines were smaller than kindergarten’s for elementary, middle-, and high-school grades, but the gaps from in-person learning are consistent across them, and large. What’s more, in all of these instances, districts that offered middling in-person instruction had middling enrollment changes.
In-person learning last year, and enrollments this year, varied predictably across “red” and “blue” districts. School districts that voted for Biden and those that voted for Trump lost similar percentages of students in fall 2020. This year, however, enrollment grew in Trump districts, resulting in a net loss of one in 52 students. In Biden districts, enrollments fell further, losing one in 26 students over two years. Three-quarters of that difference occurred after the first full pandemic school year.
So what caused these divergent enrollment patterns? A compelling indicator comes from very early in the pandemic: community mask usage in July 2020. Though measured before Omicron, Delta, or any vaccines were introduced, community masking powerfully predicted enrollment changes over two years. School districts where mask usage was highest in summer 2020 lost one in 27 students, but in areas where mask usage was least common, districts lost far fewer: about one in 68 students.
The predictive power of summer 2020 masking on school enrollments this fall highlights how divergent, durable, and powerful the culture of Covid response has been. For hundreds of thousands of families, it has influenced fundamental choices about where kids will attend school. Such profound cultural differences suggest that operational decisions made by school districts were as much a result as the cause of the forces shaping local actions.
Despite their complicated antecedents, enrollment losses should alarm school districts, because they prove that pandemic decisions have consequences. Many families showed their dissatisfaction with their district’s Covid responses by taking their kids out of school. While private schools, virtual schools, and homeschooling are serving many, others still have undoubtedly slipped through the cracks of formal schooling altogether. These declines show that, faced with what they viewed as unacceptable public-schooling options in the pandemic, families chose alternatives in record numbers.
The financial challenges that school districts face at these levels are profound and could outlast short-term buffers from revenue losses. Among comparably sized districts that entered the pandemic with 8,000 to 12,000 students, the most in-person districts could face median state and federal revenue losses of over $500,000. Their peer districts that were remote the longest face median losses five times as large, over $2,500,000 per year.
Most importantly, no one knows if this is the end of the pandemic enrollment fallout. The same sort of districts that spent more of 2020–21 remote — and lost more students — kept students masked longer this year. Masks alone may not fuel continued student losses, but if masks are indicative of Covid-altered schooling — with onerous protocols, modified schedules, and less engaged students — the pandemic’s effects on schools, and on enrollments, may be far from over.