By Adam Pagnucco.
MCPS blames a lot of its continuing enrollment drop on declining births in MoCo. However, that’s only part of what is impacting the district’s enrollment. Because while MCPS is shrinking, private schools in our county don’t appear to be losing students. What does that mean for the prestige of public education in MoCo?
First, let’s start with long-term actual and projected enrollment in MCPS as shown in the chart below. Our sources are MCPS’s recommended FY28 capital budget and an October 15 presentation to the school board.
The district’s enrollment decline is both calamitous and historic. The last time MCPS saw a sustained loss in students was between 1973 and 1984, when the district’s enrollment fell by 35,882 (28%). MCPS reacted by closing 30 schools between 1981 and 1984.
MCPS’s enrollment resumed growing afterwards and peaked at 165,267 in FY20. It is now projected to be 137,825 in FY37, a drop of 27,442 (17%). It would not be surprising if at least a dozen schools might be on the district’s chopping block by next spring.
MCPS blames declining births for much of this decrease as shown in the slide below from the October 15 board presentation.
Now here’s the thing – according to MCPS’s own information, births began falling after 2007. However, MCPS’s enrollment kept growing for the next 13 years. Part of that growth may have been from kids who were born outside the county and later moved in. One wonders if that trend has changed a bit. So births are no doubt part of the explanation, but not the only part.
MCPS also posted a slide on kindergarten capture rate, which “measures how many children born to Montgomery County residents ultimately enroll in an MCPS kindergarten class five years later.” That slide, shown below, illustrates long-term decline punctuated by a short, sharp dip during the pandemic.
And so one or more of three things are becoming increasingly common for children born in MoCo: they are going to private school, going into home schooling and/or are moving out. One bit of information on these trends showed up in a March 3 presentation to the school board. It contained the slide below showing MCPS losing students to home schooling and private schools from FY22 through FY25. The pandemic may have accounted for the first couple years of this, but not the last couple.
Now let’s look at private school enrollment, as shown in the chart below. I have two data sources on that subject and both are imperfect. The green line shows nonpublic school enrollment reported to the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) and compiled from archived reports. MSDE notes that “the data collected is self-reported and is not subject to a thorough verification and audit process.” The orange line shows private school enrollment estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s five year American Community Survey (ACS). This data is temporally imprecise and has margins of error approaching six percent.
MSDE data shows MoCo private school enrollment peaking before the Great Recession, falling afterwards and reviving after the pandemic. Census data shows lower enrollments overall than MSDE (probably because MSDE counts include non-MoCo residents who attend MoCo private schools), but it also shows private school enrollment rising after the pandemic. While the two sources differ and have varying data issues, they agree on this point: private school enrollment is now faring much better than enrollment in MCPS.
Census zip code data shows that private school enrollment is concentrated in the wealthiest parts of the county: Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Kensington and Potomac. If private schools really are drawing students away from MCPS, I wonder if public schools in those areas are disproportionately losing students. And if they are, will that show up in any closure lists produced by MCPS in the spring? Another question is whether the loss of disproportionately wealthy students will impact MCPS’s academic performance.
Finally, I will say this about MCPS and its indefatigable superintendent, Thomas Taylor – they aren’t sitting still and doing nothing. The superintendent’s new academic program regions, if executed well, may in a best case scenario prove attractive to MoCo families and lead to renewed interest in public schools. For the good of the county, I hope it does. If not, the allure of private schools will only grow, along with the cost of operating the public ones.