Happy Friday, and welcome to our weekly roundup of national education news.
Robert Pondiscio of the American Enterprise Institute marks a milestone that will shape U.S. education in the coming decades: We have passed “peak public school.”
For the foreseeable future, the number of students enrolled in America’s public schools is unlikely to match 2019’s high-water mark of 50.8 million.
This does not represent a triumph of culture warriors or a wholesale rejection of public schools. Nor is it primarily driven by policies expanding school choice.
It helps to disentangle two trends.
1. There are fewer school-age students.
Fertility rates have fallen more than 20% since 1990. As a result, there are fewer children in schools. This trend shows no sign of relenting.
This is a massive sea change. For the decade leading up to 2022, the student population grew across much of the country. Multiple states saw double digit increases.
Over the next decade, that promises to reverse. In most states, the K-12 population will shrink. Even in the 10 states with increasing populations, growth will be mostly anemic.
As long as property values keep rising, tax rates stay the same, and the economy keeps humming, this could mean a growing pool of public education funding will flow to fewer students. But it also means a growing share of that funding will be consumed by fixed obligations, like pensions and long-term bonds. The Rust Belt is already dotted with sad stories of decaying school systems drowning in debt.
This means education politics in the coming decade will shaped by scarcity, as schools compete for fewer students and larger proportions of public education funding are consumed by bills run up in days when it seemed like growth would never end.
2. Families have more options.
While the total K-12 education pie is shrinking, a few slices, like homeschooling and charter schools, continue to grow.
In addition, scholarship programs that allow families to direct public education funding to options of their choice are gaining momentum across the country. (It’s probably no accident these policies have more momentum in states, like Florida, where the student population is level or growing. See above.)
As a result, public education is becoming more dynamic. School districts are creating new options for families in a more competitive market. New charter and private schools continue to open. The rise of a la carte learning means a growing number of families are taking advantage of learning options that aren’t confined to the four walls of a school.
As more options compete for fewer students, no school, public or private, can take any student for granted. This shifts power dynamics in favor of families.
Some public schools and districts are responding to the first trend, scarcity, by embracing the second, or, as we like to say, riding the tsunami. They are creating new and different programs to attract students.
Many families still value what public schools offer. Even those who leave the public school system for a publicly funded scholarship or education savings account will pay for a few classes at their local school district if they have the option.
Peak public school, in other words, does not mean its “last days” are upon us, as this headline implies. Far from it.
Peak Reading?
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time – none, zero.”
– Charlie Munger, legendary investor and right hand to Warren Buffett
Two alarming trends: Young people are spending less time reading. At the same time, by a variety of measures, children and adults seem to be scoring worse on reading ability.
Here’s the case for long-term optimism: A voracious appetite for timeless wisdom hidden in books has delivered undeniable competitive advantages to investors like Munger and Buffet, entrepreneurs like Stripe’s Collison brothers, and thinkers like Tyler Cowen.
It’s hard to imagine a future where the market does not continue to reward reading and the abstract, complex thinking it enables.
One goal of public education must be to ensure all students are prepared to share in those rewards.
In brief
These educators have ideas to keep novels relevant in students’ eyes as they compete for attention with the likes of Instagram and YouTube.
What are the youngest children doing more of? Playing video games, according to the latest Common Sense Census.
In a growing number of states, it’s become a spring ritual: Parents by the thousands applying for education choice scholarships. More than 10,000 students applied in the first three days for Louisiana’s new LA GATOR education savings accounts. Applications opened for the first time ever in Georgia, and in Arkansas for the first year of universal eligibility.
State lawmakers are moving to curtail allowable uses of Utah Fits All education savings accounts (no more ski lodges), cap spending on extracurriculars, and reduce funding allocations for homeschoolers.
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon signed a new law expanding a small ESA program lawmakers passed last year and making eligibility universal. Last year, Gordon vetoed portions of a program passed by lawmakers, citing language in the state constitution that bars directing public funding to individuals except to provide “necessary support of the poor.” As a result, only low-income families could participate. That leaves the question of whether a universal program can pass constitutional muster unanswered.
A first-person account of how a school’s culture crumbled during the pandemic, and has yet to recover.
The New York Times looks at education reform’s retreat from “college for all.”
Newly sworn in Education Secretary Linda McMahon readies her department for its “final mission.”
