Media Mentions
Education Next: School Enrollment Shifts Five Years After the Pandemic
By Joshua Goodman and Abigail Francis
In spring 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic caused school closures throughout the United States—a seismic disruption with immediate effects on enrollment. By fall 2020, early research found that K–12 public school enrollment had dropped by 3 percent nationwide, as growing numbers of families opted to homeschool or transfer their children to private schools. This was the largest annual decline since 1943, when World War II led large numbers of teenagers to leave high school.
Boston Globe: Since COVID, larger share of Mass. parents trade public schools for private
​By Christopher Huffaker
Still, said Goodman, “There does seem to be a wider phenomenon of wealthier families generally being dissatisfied.”
Francis, Goodman’s coauthor, noted behavioral issues may help explain the decline in public middle school enrollment in particular.​ “Recent survey data has documented increased behavioral issues, especially centralized in the middle school years,” Francis said.
Yahoo Finance: Did COVID have a lasting impact on public school enrollment?
By Anna Merod
“These patterns suggest that the disruption of the pandemic led to lasting shifts in how families engage with public education,” said the study’s coauthors, Joshua Goodman and Abigail Francis, in a Tuesday statement.
The authors also suggested that some factors contributing to this enrollment shift could be declining public and parent satisfaction with public schools.
Francis: I’ll add that middle schools are where we see the biggest losses overall. There is existing survey data on increased behavioral issues post-pandemic, specifically in the middle school grades, so it’s possible that is part of the story. We’re seeing now that the pandemic induced persisting behavioral challenges for students, like chronic absenteeism and dropped attendance rates, so there is a substantial number of students who are not going back to school at the rates they were before.
Yahoo News: Public School Enrollment Continues to Fall
By Robbie Sequeira
A new study from Boston University found that high-income districts and middle schools in Massachusetts were especially vulnerable, with middle grade enrollment in fall of 2024 down almost 8% and the most significant losses concentrated among white and Asian students.
“School budgets are intertwined with enrollment numbers,” Francis said. Under Chapter 70 , enrollment size is one factor the state uses to calculate how much funding it allocates to each district...
Ultimately, the goal of the BU researchers is “to effectively help school districts and parents communicate with each other,” Francis said, noting that families’ decisions can be multifaceted.
Thomas B. Fordham Institute: A new hub for smarter education policy
Meredith Coffey examines new data from Massachusetts that reveal lasting post-pandemic shifts in school enrollment, particularly in the middle grades and in higher-income districts.
WGBH: Public school enrollment in Mass. on a five year decline as private options see higher demand
Fewer students are enrolled in public school across Massachusetts since the COVID-19 pandemic first shuttered classrooms in 2020 — with the biggest shifts in the state’s wealthiest areas.
A new study from researchers at Boston University finds that public school enrollment in Massachusetts has declined 2%, resulting in a loss of roughly 16,000 students since 2020.
Vanderbilt Commodores: Learning by the Lap
“What excites me is understanding the influence that community does play in education,” Francis said. “I feel like that is so often isolated from what’s going on in the classroom. Bridging that gap, whether it’s through connecting research and practice or just understanding the influence that community plays in the classroom—the role of parent organizations and things like that—really interests me.
