Class sizes in your local public school might be down — and not because the school board finally decided 35 kids packed in a room is just too much. Instead, in majority-Black districts, nearly a third of students have vanished from traditional public schools in the 2023-2024 school year — a disappearance almost twice as large as in white or Hispanic districts.
That’s the finding of a new report about declining public school enrollment from the Brookings Institution. According to the authors, the federal government isn’t tracking them, contributing to a generation of “missing” students.
The modest rise in private schooling and homeschooling since the pandemic may not fully account for the large number of students not enrolled in traditional public schools, Sofoklis Goulas, a co-author of the report, says. These students, a high share of whom are Black, are missing from federal datasets, leaving researchers to question what type of education they are receiving and the quality of it.
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“We don’t know what these alternative arrangements look like,” Sofoklis Goulas, one of the report’s co-authors, says. Researchers also don’t know how these students are faring in these environments, making it a challenge to understand if they are learning.
Why Are Black Students Leaving Traditional Public Schools?
It isn’t fully clear as to why Black students are leaving traditional public schools at higher and faster rates than their white and Hispanic peers, Goulas says. But data show that drops in public school enrollment are associated with school performance.
“It could be that in predominantly Black districts, school performance may be low, and this leads to families making different choices to the extent that they can,” Goulas says.
Interests in alternative forms of education, such a microschools — schools with very few students which serve those who are homeschooled — surged during the pandemic among Black families, according to EdSurge.
The need for a safe learning environment — one where Black students were not overpolicied or racially targeted — was the main driver behind this growing interest, EdSurge reported.
What Are the Consequences?
But alternative arrangements are often less regulated and more variable in performance, according to the Brookings report. Since students from predominantly Black districts make up a strong share of these arrangements, there isn’t much research to know about whether these children are receiving an education that is comparable to that of public schools.
Meanwhile, given that school funding is usually tied to enrollment, students in predominantly Black districts who continue to enroll in public schools will likely face the consequences of tighter budgets, such as fewer instructional assistants, out-of-date resources, and a lack of classroom supplies.
How Do We Fix This Issue?
At the local level, some districts are devising unique ways to support traditional public schools amid enrollment declines. In New York City, where Black children make up approximately 20% of district students, the city’s Department of Education announced it wouldn’t scale back funds from schools that suffered enrollment losses, according to Chalkbeat.
There also needs to be more data that tracks these alternative arrangements to understand what these families need, Goulas says.
“It’s paradoxical to say to the districts, ‘you need to be addressing the needs of families,’ if we do not know what these needs specifically are,” he says.