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Dive Brief:

• Public school enrollment reached 49.6 million for fall 2022, increasing just 0.4% from fall 2021 and suggesting that overall low enrollment levels triggered by the pandemic are persisting years after school building closures. Pre-K-12 enrollment remained 2% lower than 2019 levels, according to federal data released Tuesday by the National Center for Education Statistics.

• Changes in enrollment continued to vary between elementary and secondary levels. Enrollment in high school grades increased by 2% compared to 2019, while pre-K-8 enrollment stayed 4% below pre-pandemic levels.

• Fourteen states saw declines of more than 4% compared to 2019, with the largest drops in California, New York, Hawaii, Mississippi and Oregon. In contrast, enrollment increased in South Dakota, Utah, Louisiana, Delaware, District of Columbia, North Dakota and Idaho.

Dive Insight:

Prior to the pandemic, enrollment was at 50.8 million in fall 2019.

Following the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics noted a historic 3% decline in public school enrollment to 49.4 million in fall 2020. Those declines were concentrated mostly in pre-k and kindergarten.

Enrollment experts predicted that declines in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten would likely rebound, since redshirting, or postponing entrance into K-12, can only continue for so long before it becomes illegal.

That prediction was confirmed in fall 2021 data, which showed a 14% increase for pre-kindergarten and a 5% increase for kindergarten.

However, in fall 2022, there was some fluctuation, with increases in Pre-K enrollment and decreases in kindergarten. Both still remain behind 2019 levels, however.

Overall enrollment also continued to lag in fall 2021 at 49.5 million, despite anticipation from public education experts that those levels may rebound.

The overall low enrollment levels that began in fall 2020 and continued into 2022 mark the reversal of near steady enrollment increases over the past two decades. In 2021, NCES Commissioner Peggy Carr called this trend “preliminary but concerning.”

That trend has persisted, however.

“Total public school enrollment is still down, by about 1.2 million students, when compared with data collected just before the pandemic, but it was stable from 2021 to 2022," said Carr in a statement on Monday. "This points to a continuously changing school enrollment landscape.”