Fewer Students Are Enrolled in Public School Than Before the Pandemic
Research from BU indicates that COVID-era lockdowns continue to impact the makeup of public schools
Recent Boston University research found public school enrollment last year was 4 percent lower than in 2019. Photo by diane39/iStock
Fewer Students Are Enrolled in Public School Than Before the Pandemic
Research from BU indicates that COVID-era lockdowns continue to impact the makeup of public schools
Massachusetts public schools are in session, with young learners filling classrooms and lunchrooms. But there are notably fewer students now than before the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a recent study, Boston University researchers found that public school enrollment in the state had not recovered since the pandemic shuttered schools in 2020. Last year’s enrollment was about 4 percent lower than it was in fall 2019, and 2 percent lower than predicted, which is equivalent to losing about 16,000 public school students.
“There’s no question that school closures sent a set of families out of the public schools who then never returned,” says Joshua Goodman, a BU Wheelock College of Education & Human Development and College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of education and economics and lead author of the study. At the same time, private school enrollments rose by 14 percent and homeschooling increased by 45 percent. According to the paper, there are notable differences in enrollment patterns by income, race, and ethnicity, suggesting that the pandemic has altered the demographic composition of public schools.
Public school numbers have dropped the most in the state’s wealthiest areas: Brookline, Cambridge, Newton, and Weston are among the districts with significant enrollment declines. Those leaving public schools at the highest rates, according to the data, are white and Asian students. The paper notes “a persistent exodus from Massachusetts public schools” of about 3 percent of white students and 8 percent of Asian students. In contrast, Black and Hispanic student enrollment has recovered to pre-pandemic numbers. This trend is also reflective of public school enrollments nationwide, the authors say.
To understand these trends and the impact on public schools, The Brink sat down with Goodman and coauthor Abigail Francis (Wheelock’29), a BU doctoral student in educational policy studies.
Q&A
with Joshua Goodman and Abigail Francis
The Brink: When you first started looking at enrollment numbers, what surprised you?
Goodman: It’s certainly the case that, even five years out, we see substantial changes in school enrollment patterns. Those changes are still with us, even though the closures and the mask mandates are all in the rearview mirror. I’m a parent of three public school students in Cambridge, and we watched a lot of families in 2020 make decisions about whether to remain enrolled in public schools. We’ve also watched families, even in the last year or two, who first stayed with the public schools but now chose to leave them for various reasons. Many of these factors motivated my desire to bring data to clarify what was going on.
The Brink: Why do you think the pandemic had such a lasting effect on schools?
Goodman: There might be a different answer to that question depending on the period of time. If you think about fall 2020, there were very big differences in what schools were offering students educationally. Public schools were completely closed, so many children, including my own, were shut out of physical school for a full calendar year. Many of our friends who chose to send their kids to private schools were back in school in person in fall of 2020. I think the closures shook people’s faith in schools’ commitment to providing the services they were supposed to. Plus, parents don’t want to bounce their kids back and forth to different schools, so once they decided to leave, they stayed out. Now that all schools are back in person, the data suggests that there’s a difference between the patterns among high-income families and everyone else. It’s the high-income public school districts that have sustained these enrollment losses over time, whereas everyone else is slowly creeping back to normal. Some families now see that their kids’ peers are struggling, either with learning or behavior, and, if they have the money, that money can buy them an option to be in a different environment; it’s not so surprising that some are making that choice.
Francis: I’ll add that middle schools are where we see the biggest losses overall. There is existing survey data on increased behavioral issues post-pandemic, specifically in the middle school grades, so it’s possible that is part of the story. We’re seeing now that the pandemic induced persisting behavioral challenges for students, like chronic absenteeism and dropped attendance rates, so there is a substantial number of students who are not going back to school at the rates they were before.
The Brink: The rate of homeschooling has gone up drastically too. What do you make of that finding?
Goodman: Homeschooling rates are 50 percent higher than before. It’s not as high as it was in the fall of 2020, but clearly many families decided to homeschool their kids then and stuck with that decision. I think it’s worth emphasizing that, because of the pandemic, a lot of students are struggling with their academic achievement. For parents of students who are doing well and want more rigorous academic challenges, it’s hard to find that in schools that are largely focused on catching kids up right now. The data indicates that the population of students that public schools are losing tends to be families whose kids are higher achieving, have higher test scores, and higher grades. Something that our data wouldn’t detect is families, like our own, that haven’t gone the full private school route, but have added a private activity or tutor to add more challenges to their curriculum.
The Brink: What impact will this have on our public schooling system, since these gaps in education are growing wider, especially for students who can’t afford other options?
Goodman: I really worry about two things. One is just the general fact that there’s a set of families who have now removed themselves from the public schools and could have otherwise been advocates for public schools as voters in elections about budgets and district decisions. A lot of people have now been removed from the equation. I also worry that this pattern suggests public schools are developing a reputation for catering more to kids who are struggling and are not designed for kids who need challenges. That’s a dangerous reputation for public schools to develop, because it’s hard to shake that once people believe it.
Francis: I want to add that our paper, by providing this information broken down by subsets, can give public schools the information they need about who they’re losing, so that they can rectify the situation. For example, since we’re seeing so many losses in middle schools, there could be efforts made to provide more resources to those grades and certain demographics of students. These numbers can give districts areas to focus on, by seeing if there’s interventions or extra resources to pull specifically for those pockets. We hope that this serves as a timely report and as a good first step to understanding why this is happening. We’re grateful that the Massachusetts Education-to-Career Research and Data Hub has up-to-date data so that we can write this paper.
The Brink: If this data can get in front of decision-makers and leaders in schools, what do you hope would change?
Goodman: My hope is that schools and school districts take seriously the need to figure out why they’ve lost appeal to a subset of parents, and what it is that they would need to do to get those families back. I think the lost enrollment is a sign that the services being provided are not aligned with what some families want.
Francis: Yes, and this is a problem that, based on the data we have at the national level, is very reflective of the nation as a whole. Schools provide so many resources to students, so those conversations are important for schools across the country.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
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