Education Crisis? Student Enrollment Down Across The Nation

(Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)

Vaccination mandates only exasperating the situation.

By: Kelli Ballard | September 30, 202 1 Articles, Education, Good Reads   |  News Article

Schools have been in session for less than two months, and already some districts are seeing an alarming decline in enrollment. Perhaps it’s concern that teachers might not have gotten the shot or just a general fear surrounding all things COVID-19. Maybe parents are tired of the politics in public education, like vaccine mandates and critical race theory, and prefer the convenience and control of homeschooling. Whatever the reason, educational institutes are losing students – and losing students means losing funding.

The Los Angeles Times reported that last year’s enrollment for pre-school through grade 12 at the Los Angeles Unified School District was 466,229 compared to 439,013 on the same date this year. That’s a drop of nearly 6%. Statewide, K-12 public schools saw a decline of almost 3%, or 160,000 kids, according to the California Department of Education. That was the largest drop in 20 years.

L.A. School board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin said the decline is worrisome:

“I’m very concerned about declining enrollment, especially for our highest-need students, small schools, and the overall fiscal health of our district.”

According to preliminary data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, as reported by K-12 Dive, nationwide public school enrollment for the 2020-21 school year fell by 3%, the most significant drop since “the start of this century.” Breaking it down even further:

• Kindergarten enrollments declined by 9%.

• Pre-K and Kindergarten combined had a 13% drop.

• Grades 1-8 saw a 3% decline.

• Grades 9-12 saw an increase of 0.4%.

Mississippi and Vermont had the largest statewide drops in new and returning students with a decline of 5%, while Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Washington State were not far behind with a 4% drop.

Digging down deeper, Robin Lake, an education researcher and director for the Center on Reinventing Public Education, said enrollment declines were more pronounced for districts that had stayed closed longer due to the pandemic and lockdowns. Critics of closing schools have been saying from the beginning that doing so is not in the best interest of students who need social interaction for healthy early development. Mark Schneider, director of the Institute of Education Sciences, said in a statement:

“Research shows that these early years are essential in helping students succeed academically and socially. While it is too soon to say which students were most affected; it is safe to assume that students who struggle the most may be the ones who really lost out.”

Shortage Of Students And Staff

Even with a shortfall in enrollment, schools across the nation still struggle to maintain enough staff where COVID vaccinations have become mandatory. According to the L.A. Times, one of the problems for districts in the Los Angeles area is that they “can’t find enough applicants to fill vacancies in key teaching, mental health and nursing posts as well as maintenance jobs.” Currently, there are 622 teacher vacancies, and “as of Sept. 20, 39% of the teachers working with the 15,000 students in remote learning were substitutes.”

L.A. Unified schools estimate between 70% and 80% of staff will be fully vaccinated by the Oct. 15 deadline, “indicating that thousands of employees face termination, which would exacerbate another problem: more than 2,000 unfilled jobs,” the Times pointed out. Furthermore:

“The district also is seeking 334 building and grounds workers, 189 licensed vocational nurses, more than 300 instructional aides, more than 600 psychiatric social workers, 272 teachers for a special program to accelerate math and English in young students below grade level.”

With enrollment down, schools across the nation that count on government funding are finding it difficult to meet their budgetary needs.

~ Read more from Kelli Ballard.

The School Closures Are a Big Threat to the Power of Public Schools | Ryan McMaken

05/14/2020Ryan McMaken

Twenty twenty is likely to be a watershed year in the history of public schooling. And things aren't looking good for the public schools.

For decades, we've been fed a near-daily diet of claims that public schooling is one of the most important—if not the most important—institutions in America. We're also told that there's not nearly enough of it, and this leads to demands for longer school hours, longer school years, and ever larger amounts of money spent on more facilities and more tech.

And then, all of sudden, with the panic over COVID-19, it was gone.

It turns out that public schooling wasn't actually all that important after all, and that extending the lives of the over-seventy demographic takes precedence.

Yes, the schools have tried to keep up the ruse that students are all diligently doing their school work at home, but by late April it was already apparent that the old model of "doing public school" via internet isn't working. In some places, class participation has collapsed by 60 percent, as students simply aren't showing up for the virtual lessons.

The political repercussions of all this will be sizable.

Changing Attitudes among the Middle Classes

Ironically, public schools have essentially ditched lower-income families almost completely even though school district bureaucrats have long based the political legitimacy of public schools on the idea that they are an essential resource for low-income students. So as long as the physical schools remain closed, this claim will become increasingly unconvincing. After all, "virtual" public schooling simply doesn't work for these families, since lower-income households are more likely to depend on both parents' incomes and parents may have less flexible job schedules. This means less time for parents to make sure little Sally logs on to her virtual classes. Many lower-income households don't even have internet access or computing equipment beyond their smartphones. Only 56 percent of households with incomes under $30,000 have access to broadband internet.

Nonetheless, working-class and lower-income parents are likely to return their children to the schools when they open again. Many believe they have no other choice.

Attitudes among the middle classes will be a little different, however, and may be more politically damaging to the future of the public schools.

Like their lower-income counterparts, middle class parents have long been happy to take advantage of the schools as a child-care service. But the non-educational amenities didn't stop there. Middle-class parents especially have long  embraced the idea that billions of dollars spent on school music programs, school sports, and other extracurriculars were all absolutely essential to student success. Sports provided an important social function for both the students and the larger community.

But as the list of amenities we once associated with schooling gets shorter and shorter, households at all income levels will start to wonder what exactly they're paying for.

Stripped of the non-academic side of things,  public schools now must sell themselves only as providers of academic skills. Many parents are likely to be left unimpressed, and this will be all the more true for middle class families where the parents are able to readily adopt homeschooling as a real substitute. The households that do have the infrastructure to do this are now far more likely to conclude that they simply don't need the public schools much of the time. There are now so many resources provided for free outside the schools—such as Khan Academy, to just name one—that those who are already savvy with online informational resources will quickly understand that the schools aren't essential.

In addition to this, many parents who were on autopilot in terms of assuming they were getting their money's worth may suddenly be realizing that public schools—even when they were physically open—weren't that much of a bargain after all. As Gary North recently observed,

For the first time, parents can see exactly what is being taught to their children. They can see the quality of the teachers. They can learn about the content of the educational materials.

Many parents may not like what they see, and as many increasingly take on the job of providing in-person instruction, school teachers won't look quite like the highly trained heroes they have long claimed to be.

Budget Cuts

With the image of schools as indispensable social institutions quickly fading, the political advantage they have long enjoyed will rapidly disappear as well. It wasn't long ago that schools could go back to the taxpayers again and again with with demands for more money, more resources, and higher salaries. Teacher unions endlessly lectured the taxpayers about how getting your child into a classroom with one of their teachers was of the utmost importance. Voters, regardless of political ideology or party, were often amendable to the idea.

That narrative is already greatly in danger, and the longer the COVID-19 panic ensures that schools remain closed, the more distant the memory of the old narrative will become. As school budgets contract, school districts from Las Vegas to Denver and across the nation are bracing for furloughs and layoffs.

With smaller staff, fewer teachers, and smaller budgets, expect virtual public learning to become even more bare bones, and less rewarding and engaging for students.

What Will Things Look like This Fall?

Even if schools open this fall, the reforms currently being pushed will ensure that schools continue to lack many of the amenities many have come to expect. If these reforms are adopted, students can forget about social events. They can expect shorter school days, and an ongoing role for online schooling. Team sports will be gone. Old notions of universal mandatory attendance and long days will seem increasingly quaint and old fashioned—or possibly even dangerous.

For many parents, this will just reinforce their growing suspicions that public schools just aren't worth it anymore. Maybe they never were.