This State Has Lost the Most Public School Students

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Sep 23, 11:10AM EDT

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This State Has Lost the Most Public School Students — © smolaw11 / iStock via Getty Images

Public schools are bleeding students. Education Week reports that, based on a survey of 51 state departments of education, all experience fall-offs in enrollment from the 2019/2020 school year to the 2020/2021 year. The total estimated drop nationally, based on the same evidence, was 1.45 million students who left public schools.

What was the problem? That can only be answered in theory. There are a plethora of ideas, and some of them may be partially true. Perhaps parents found that distance learning was actually a better experience than public school classrooms have been. Others believe that charter schools are more attractive than public schools, although both get government funding. Some parents may have elected to send their children to entirely private schools, in the belief that these offer the very best education.

The National Alliance of Public Charter Schools has issued a report titled “Voting With Their Feet: A State-Level Analysis of Public Charter School and District Public School Enrollment Trends.” At first look, there is a chance the study is self-serving. The work of the alliance is to advocate for the superiority of charter schools, advocacy that targets parents, lawmakers and “thought” leaders.

The primary conclusion of the study is this: “During the 2020-21 school year, charter school enrollment grew 7%, the largest increase in half a decade.” This is presented against the backdrop of the loss of students in the public school system during the same period.
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According to the study, public schools lost 3.3% of their enrollment between the two periods.

Among all the states, the size of the swing between public and charter school enrollment was greatest in Oklahoma. Charter school enrollment rose 77.7%. Public school enrollment dropped 6.9%.

Among the weaknesses of the study is that it is a single-year snapshot. A single year does not make a trend. This year is another in which school attendance, in general, almost certainly will be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. If and when the virus begins to spread less aggressively, the school attendance figures may change again.

These are the 10 states losing the most public school students:

Oklahoma (−6.9%)
Arizona (−6.1%)
Oregon (−5.5%)
Mississippi (−5.1%)
New Hampshire (−5.0%)
New Mexico (−4.9%)
Michigan (−4.7%)
Colorado (−4.5%)
Maine (−4.5%)
Massachusetts (−4.2%)

Click here to see which is the worst school district in each state.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.