TOP TASKS

Spread the word that declining enrollment affects schools of choice as well

We have been a bit obsessed with this topic in the Roundup and we are back writing about it because we think it’s that important.

We first warned of tough fiscal choices awaiting districts as student enrollment numbers dropped in April of 2023. By February of 2024, the Baby Bust had begun to affect large districts, with Los Angeles public schools and charter schools seeing significant enrollment declines. Four months later, we looked at Chicago, where one school was so underenrolled the per-pupil expenditures had risen to $93,000/student. Most recently, in spring of this year, we took stock of how declining enrollment coupled with “hold harmless” policies was creating a budget crisis in New York schools.

Now, we have one of the first portraits of how the Baby Bust is affecting smaller districts in Massachusetts, like Methuen and Lowell. “We definitely have too many schools for how many kids we have,” Marguerite Roza told the Wall Street Journal last week. The Journal describes the fallout: “The debates hit hard in Massachusetts, which has long prided itself on a top-tier public education. Near Methuen in the Merrimack Valley, Dracut Public Schools are considering closing an elementary school that has shrunk to 210 students from almost 300, eliminating busing for some grades and reducing full-day kindergarten to half. In North Andover, administrators closed an elementary school last year as a result of declining enrollment, redistributing about 200 students.”

Roza notes that nationwide enrollment has fallen 3.7% since 2017 with the decline expected to continue.

“Choice cannot be the scapegoat,” Cara Candal, vice president of policy at ExcelinEd, told The 74 earlier this month. “There just aren’t enough kids.” In fact, schools of choice are confronting the same challenges and making hard choices as a result. “When the Atlanta Public Schools announced last year that it would close 16 schools with declining enrollment, district buildings weren’t the only ones on the list. The plans to ‘repurpose’ facilities swept up two KIPP charters, Soul Primary and Soul Academy, which shared a campus in a predominantly Black community on the west side,” Linda Jacobson writes for The 74.

Advocates should be prepared that as schools compete for students, choice models will make for an easy and convenient political scapegoat. “The charter schools are siphoning kids off the public schools,” Lissette Fernandez, founder of Moms for Libros, a Miami public school advocacy group, told Jacobson.

What can be done that could be more productive? Right-size the number of districts to a state’s smaller student population. That’s exactly what New America is trying to make it easier for advocates and policymakers to do with their new School District Merger Lab where you can simulate different approaches to combining districts in your state.

Orient CTE programs to student outcomes

While enrollment might be shrinking everywhere, there’s one area that’s resisting the trend: career and technical education. As PPI‘s Bruno Manno notes, CTE programs have soared to over 8 million students with a growth rate of 10% year-over-year.

Manno cautions, however, that while growing enrollment is to be celebrated, the results of CTE programs have been rather mixed so far, with issues ranging from credentials not being aligned to workforce needs, emerging gender gaps in earnings and issues in providing participating students with internships and apprenticeships that would speed entry into the workforce.

Manno offers six recommendations for district officials and advocates that can improve CTE programs now:

1. Fix the local needs assessment, the process by which districts identify workforce gaps and align K-12 programming, to make it useful.
2. Upgrade current CTE programs instead of creating new ones.
3. Offer clear options for further education, including college.
4. Broker placements between schools and employers.
5. Link school and wage records and report results to the public.
6. Close ineffective or low-demand programs.

One of the leaders on this working in the 50CAN network has been David Sun-Miyashiro, executive director of HawaiiKidsCAN, who has made program and workforce alignment central to his advocacy agenda over the past three years. Here is what he told us: “Given Hawaii’s extreme cost of living and continued out-migration of young talent, the stakes are incredibly high for students who don’t have the skills and connections they need to access living wage careers in the state. That is why HawaiiKidsCAN has helped pass legislation to improve CTE programs by promoting valuable industry recognized credentials and to expand data sharing and reporting systems to better track student outcomes. These recommendations provide a great blueprint for what can come next.”

Key Resources

The 74 has the story of EDGE Microschool in Missouri, one of the nation’s first public microschools, that was created by teachers and administrators within a larger high school.

Fordham dives into the latest state in the Southern Surge that’s showing a literacy turnaround: Alabama.

Given the challenging job market awaiting recent college graduates, Urban Institute’s new brief offers recommendations for colleges and universities, including building students’ workplace readiness skills and non-degree credentials.

One way community colleges are mitigating the Baby Bust and enrollment decreases: enrolling older adults. Chalkbeat reports on a community college in Colorado that’s gained hundreds of older adult learners.