Data-Driven Education Journalism
After two years of improvement, chronic absenteeism reversed in 2025. Thirteen of 17 districts worsened, erasing nearly half a year of progress.
North Platte Public Schools has the longest decline streak among Nebraska's mid-size districts, losing 14.8% of enrollment since 2016 even as the state grew.
North Dakota's largest district went from 13% to 26% chronic absence, with school-level rates ranging from 5% to 37% and Native American students at 53%.
Livingston Elem enrollment fell from 1,000 to 716 since 2018, the third-fastest decline among Montana districts with 200+ students, even as Park County's tourism economy booms.
White enrollment hit a record-low 40.5% of Mississippi public school students in 2026 as both white and Black groups decline.
Nearly one in five Minnesota students now receives special education services, up from one in seven in 2014, straining budgets despite a historic state funding increase.
In a state that has lost 349,000 students since 2004, Byron Center Public Schools has doubled its enrollment across 28 consecutive years of growth.
After a brief post-COVID recovery, Kansas enrollment has dropped for three straight years, with 181 districts losing students in 2026 and no sign of stabilization.
Denver Public Schools' homeless student chronic absenteeism rate hit 76.2% in 2024-25, worsening by 5 points as the district's equity gaps widened across nearly every subgroup.
Dashboard Alternative School Status schools have a 38-point chronic absenteeism gap over traditional schools, the largest structural divide in California's attendance data.
Alaska's post-COVID enrollment gains were an illusion. The state is now 3,272 students below pre-pandemic levels, and correspondence growth masked deeper traditional losses.
Charter enrollment surged 17.5% during the pandemic, driven almost entirely by virtual schools. Four years later, the sector has kept those gains.
One in three Hispanic students in Washington is chronically absent, and the gap with white students has widened from 4.9 to 8.9 percentage points since the pandemic.
Virginia crossed the majority-minority threshold in 2014. Since then, white enrollment has fallen by 106,000 students and 13 more divisions have flipped.
RI's four gateway cities all exceeded 33% chronic absenteeism in 2022. Providence and Central Falls recovered dramatically; Pawtucket and Woonsocket barely moved.
Coatesville Area SD went from 50% chronic absence to 13% in three years, the largest such improvement among traditional Pennsylvania districts.
Denver's six largest suburban districts have lost a combined 35,776 students from their peaks. All six hit all-time lows in 2025-26.
175 Arizona districts reached their all-time enrollment low in 2025-26, including most of the state's largest traditional systems.
Glendo High School enrolled one student in 2025-26. One of 19 Wyoming schools with fewer than 10, part of a rural system in the least populated state.
Winooski SD, Vermont's most diverse district, saw chronic absenteeism surge from 29% to 53% in one year as immigration enforcement heightened student anxiety.
Texas has 1.35 million English learners, up 97% in 20 years. LEP growth was 4.5x total enrollment growth since 2020, but 2025 brought the first dip.
38 of South Carolina's 81 school districts recorded their lowest enrollment in 12 years in 2025-26, while 64 declined and only 7 reached highs.
Ohio's 2025-26 kindergarten class of 112,390 is the smallest in 12 years, 1,865 below the COVID floor.
Just 101 of 722 New York districts have returned to pre-pandemic enrollment. Nine in ten students attend a district still below 2019.
Newark's chronic absenteeism dropped from 26.8% to 11.5%, falling below the state average while 87% of NJ districts remain above pre-COVID levels.
North Dakota's enrollment sits 6,336 students below its pre-COVID trajectory, a gap worth $71.9 million in per-pupil funding that widens each year.
No Massachusetts district has declined longer without interruption than Ludlow, which has lost students every year since 2009 and shed 30.6%.
Of 269 Indiana corporations that lost students during COVID, only 60 have returned to pre-pandemic levels. The state just hit a new post-COVID low.
One in three economically disadvantaged students in Hawaii is chronically absent, up from 21% before COVID to 32% in 2024-25.
Georgia's graduation rate climbed 19.8 points since 2011, matching the national average. The Class of 2025 produced 35,520 more graduates.
Jacksonville's school district recorded a 44.8% chronic absenteeism rate in 2023-24 — the highest ever and the worst among Florida's large districts.
Delaware's four-year graduation rate reached 88.9% for the class of 2023, its highest ever, but the state has never crossed 90%. The DOE wants 91% by 2028.
CREC magnet enrollment grew 96% since 2011 under the Sheff desegregation ruling while Hartford lost 27% of its students and dropped from largest to fourth-largest district.
Native American students face 37.3% chronic absenteeism, 13.5 points above the state average. On some reservations, the rate exceeds 60%.
Milwaukee's 46.2% chronic absenteeism rate means 28,355 students miss too much school — 22% of all chronically absent students statewide.
Only Wayne, Carbon, and Juab districts have returned to pre-COVID chronic absenteeism rates. The other 38 carry an average excess of 11.3 percentage points.
The ratio of kindergartners to 12th graders has collapsed from 1.41 to 1.10 in a decade, signaling years of accelerating enrollment decline ahead.
Homeless students in SC have a 48.7% chronic absenteeism rate that has barely budged in four years, while foster care students are getting worse.
Black chronic absenteeism in Paterson hit 45.9% in 2023-24, still 10.7 points above pre-COVID levels and 4x the statewide white rate.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Wake, Guilford, Cumberland, and Winston-Salem/Forsyth have 256,966 chronically absent students, 65.7% of the state total.
Maine lost 2,134 students in 2025-26, the worst non-COVID year on record. Three years of losses have erased the post-pandemic bounce.
White enrollment fell to 40.2% in Louisiana public schools, down from 47.1% in seven years. Seventy of 74 parishes lost white students.
Native American students cut their chronic absenteeism rate from 32.8% to 21.3% over four years, far outpacing every other racial group in Idaho.
Delaware cut chronic absenteeism from 25.7% to 17.1% in three years, with each year's improvement larger than the last.
Alabama's largest district has declined for 10 straight years, shedding 11,829 students since 2016. No year in the streak brought a gain.
Memphis-Shelby County Schools posted a 30.2% chronic absenteeism rate in 2024-25 while every other major Tennessee district improved. The gap is widening.
Nebraska's chronic absenteeism rate has fallen only 2.4 percentage points from its 2022 peak, with 21,515 more students chronically absent than before COVID.
St. Louis Public Schools enrolled 43,420 students in 2001. By 2026, just 16,211 remain, a 62.7% collapse that now threatens the district's accreditation and half its buildings.
Baltimore City's 48.7% chronic absenteeism rate is 22.0 points above the state average and nearly three times Frederick County's rate.
Iowa lost 14,710 students in three years, exceeding the COVID crash. The 2026 loss of 7,670 doubled the prior year and 236 of 329 districts shrank.
Hawaii's COVID enrollment recovery reversed in 2025-26 as all four counties widened the gap from 2019. The state lost 3,425 students in a single year.
Before COVID, Georgia's Black-white chronic absenteeism gap was 2.9 points. Six years later it has ballooned to 7.5 points, still widening.
Hartford School District's chronic absenteeism rate never dropped below 22% in nine years of data — the pre-COVID baseline reveals a structural attendance emergency that the pandemic only amplified.
More than one in three Clark County students were chronically absent in 2024-25. The district accounts for 68% of all chronically absent students in Nevada.
Douglas, Sarpy, and Lancaster counties added 40,015 students since 2005 while the rest of Nebraska lost 775, a 5.5-point enrollment shift.
Native American students face a 39% chronic absence rate, 24 points above white peers, with reservation districts like Belcourt and Fargo reporting rates above 50%.
Hispanic enrollment rose 44.8% since 2018 while every other racial group declined. Growth spans the state but may be slowing.
Six Mississippi Delta school districts have lost 5,687 students since 2016, a 34.8% decline that is 2.7 times the statewide rate.
The state that invented charter schools 35 years ago saw its charter share stall at 8.3% in 2025-26, even as 76 of the 245 charters ever opened have closed.
Michigan public schools have lost 348,841 students over 20 consecutive years, a 20.3% decline that has erased $3.5 billion in funding capacity.
Goddard USD 265 grew every year from 2006 to 2023, adding 2,100 students. Then the streak broke, and voters rejected a $196 million bond.
Colorado Springs District 11 saw chronic absenteeism surge 16.6 percentage points in one year, the largest swing among any large Colorado district, with more than half of Black and Hispanic students now chronically absent.
Charter schools had 5.8 points lower chronic absenteeism than traditional schools at the pandemic peak. By 2025, the gap has essentially closed.
Three correspondence districts added 5,880 students since 2020 while traditional districts lost thousands. Mat-Su Borough is the sole traditional exception.
Only 23 of 822 Illinois districts have returned to pre-pandemic chronic absenteeism rates. The rest are stuck 11 points above baseline.
Wisconsin lost 8,121 public school students in 2024-25, its second-largest non-COVID drop. Combined with last year's 8,802 loss, the two-year decline rivals the pandemic year itself.
After three years of steady improvement, Tacoma's chronic absenteeism rate rose 2.3 points to 36.2% in 2025 — the largest reversal among Washington's top 10 districts.
Virginia recovered less than a fifth of students lost to COVID. Five years later, enrollment is still sliding and the forces behind it are structural.
Barrington has maintained the lowest chronic absenteeism rate among large RI districts for 13 years, never exceeding 10% — even during the COVID peak.
42% of Black students in Philadelphia are chronically absent, compared to 27% of white students. The gap has tripled since pre-COVID.
From Clark County to Esmeralda's 69 students, traditional districts across Nevada are smaller than at any point in the last eight years as charters grow.
Arizona's COVID enrollment shock was the largest single-year loss in state data. But the 59,272 students lost since the 2022 bounce dwarf the pandemic itself.
Wyoming lost 2,483 students in 2025-26, the largest single-year decline in the state's 26-year enrollment record, surpassing even the COVID drop.
Vermont's chronic absenteeism peaked at 37.4% in 2022 and has recovered only 59% of the way back. The improvement decelerated from 10.5 points to 2.6 points in one year.
Houston ISD has fallen to 168,812 students, its lowest in 22 years, while suburban neighbors added nearly 200,000.
The Charter Institute at Erskine grew from 8,450 to 28,376 students in seven years, becoming SC's sixth-largest district.
Cleveland Municipal fell to 32,369 students, down 16.7% since 2015. The district is closing 29 schools to address a $150 million deficit.
Rochester City School District has lost 12,880 students since peaking in 2006, declining every year since 2010. No other Big Five district comes close.
McKenzie County grew 345% since 2008 as the Bakken boom reshaped western ND. Rapid growth brought teacher shortages and a graduation gap.
After tripling from 77,410 to 237,226 since 1994, Hispanic enrollment in Massachusetts fell by 1,298 in 2026. Gateway cities bore the losses.
73 charter corporations in Marion County enrolled 35,898 students in 2025-26, 1.8 times the 19,774 at IPS. The crossover came in 2020.
Hawaii's charter schools show the widest chronic absenteeism spread of any school category, from Kanuikapono PCS at 1% to Connections PCS at 59%, revealing that charter status alone says nothing about attendance.
Florida's chronic absenteeism rate sits at 31.4%, barely below its pandemic peak. At the current pace, the state won't return to pre-COVID levels until 2048.
Nearly one in three Connecticut districts is now majority-minority, double the rate in 2011. The shift has moved from cities to inner suburbs.
Arizona cut chronic absenteeism from 32% to 24%, but progress nearly stopped in 2025. At current pace, pre-COVID levels won't return until the 2040s.
After cutting chronic absenteeism by 3.2 points in 2023, Wisconsin's improvement shrank to just 0.4 points in 2025 — leaving 130,131 students still missing too much school.
Charter chronic absenteeism jumped 2.8 points to 27.3% in 2025 while traditional districts edged down to 23.3%, opening the widest sector gap on record.
New Jersey's chronic absenteeism rate has improved since its 2022 peak, but just 12.9% of districts have returned to pre-pandemic levels. The gap is widest in urban districts.
North Carolina's chronic absenteeism rate dropped to 25% but the pace of improvement has more than halved, leaving 391,065 students missing a month of school.
Maine's second-largest district has added students three years running, driven by immigrant families remaking a former mill town even as the state hits an enrollment low.
Charter enrollment reached 12.4% of Louisiana's public school total in 2025-26, gaining 6,914 students since 2022 while traditional parishes lost 32,171.
Caldwell District's 34.1% chronic absenteeism rate is the highest among Idaho's large districts — and higher than when the state started tracking the data.
Brandywine, Christina, Colonial, and Red Clay lost 6,476 students combined while the rest of Delaware grew 20%. The Redding Consortium voted to merge them.
Tennessee cut chronic absenteeism from its peak but the pace of improvement halved last year, leaving nearly one in five students chronically absent.
Alliance Public Schools achieved Nebraska's largest chronic absenteeism improvement: a 28.5 percentage-point drop over four consecutive years.
Missouri's 855,081 public school students in 2025-26 marks a 25-year low, with losses accelerating from 220 students per year in the 2000s to nearly 3,900 per year since 2019.
After a decade of growth, Iowa's Hispanic enrollment fell by 197 students. Des Moines and meatpacking towns drove the loss.
Hawaii enrollment hit 163,651, a new record low. Losses nearly quadrupled in two years as housing costs push families to the mainland.
In the COVID-shortened 2019-20 school year, 78 of 187 Connecticut districts hit their worst-ever chronic absenteeism rates — a preview of the spike to 23.7% that would come two years later.
An estimated 155,000 Nevada students were chronically absent in 2024-25, with a weighted statewide rate of 32.6% -- nearly double the pre-COVID level.
Fremont voted to ban undocumented renters in 2010. Its schools are now 50.5% Hispanic and 45.2% white. The crossover happened in 2025.
Despite reopening schools faster than almost any state, North Dakota's chronic absenteeism rate has flatlined at 20% for two consecutive years, recovering just 20% of the way back to pre-pandemic levels.
Bozeman's high school district has added 687 students over eight consecutive years of growth, the longest streak in Montana, even as every other major city's elementary enrollment hits record lows.
Ten consecutive years of decline have cost Mississippi 62,661 public school students, a 12.9% drop with no reversal in sight.
St. Cloud's Black enrollment surged from 12% to 43% in 20 years, driven by Somali resettlement. The district now has more Black students than white.
White enrollment fell 31% while Hispanic and multiracial students tripled, reshaping a school system that is shrinking and diversifying simultaneously.
No Kansas district has changed more. Turner-Kansas City went from 67% white to 23% in 21 years, the largest racial composition shift in the state.
After two years of accelerating improvement, Colorado's chronic absenteeism rate ticked back up to 28.5% in 2025, putting the state's goal of 15% by 2027-28 out of reach.
Bakersfield City School District went from 51.6% chronic absenteeism to 18.9% in three years, dropping below the state average.
Montgomery Public Schools names Phillip Brooks principal of JAG High School, the former Jefferson Davis HS renamed for civil rights leaders in 2022.
Black enrollment fell from 3,317 to 2,669 since 2020, the steepest decline of any racial group and nearly eight times the statewide rate.
Wisconsin lost 150,475 white students since 2006, a 22.1% decline that dwarfs the state's total enrollment loss of 67,640.
After three years of improvement, Washington's chronic absence rate barely budged in 2025, leaving 296,544 students missing too much school.
VDOE releases 2024-25 data showing 1,261,501 students statewide, down 36,511 from peak, with only 19% of losses recovered.
Nevada's charter schools closed the racial gap with traditional districts even as charters gained 28,201 students and traditional lost 53,160.
Native American students in Colorado public schools dropped from 6,420 to 4,974 over 11 years, declining nearly twice as fast as white enrollment.
Arizona's largest district has lost nearly 10,000 students since 2019, with losses accelerating to 2,625 in the latest year alone.
WDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing Wyoming lost 2,483 students, the largest single-year decline in 26 years of records.
Texas enrollment fell 47,195 students in 2025-26, only the second decline in 22 years and the first not caused by a pandemic.
Hispanic enrollment in SC nearly doubled in 11 years, from 60,023 to 116,754. Without that growth, the state would have lost students.
Hispanic enrollment in Ohio grew 68% in 11 years, reshaping districts from Columbus suburbs to Lake Erie nursery towns. Then 2026 hit a wall.
Nearly half of New York's 1,064 districts hit their lowest enrollment ever in 2026, including 24 of 32 NYC geographic districts.
North Dakota's four-year graduation rate has fallen every year since 2020, dropping 6.6 points as a growing cohort outpaces the system.
Massachusetts LEP enrollment nearly tripled over 30 years to a peak of 127,673 in 2025. In 2026, it dropped 5.4%, the second-largest decline on record.
Indiana's majority-minority school corporations grew from 79 to 134 in a decade, reshaping suburbs from Avon to Seymour and manufacturing towns statewide.
Immigration powered Danbury to buck a statewide enrollment collapse, but a 506-student drop in 2025-26 signals the growth engine may be stalling.
South Dakota's 147 school districts range from 20 to 24,841 students. The bottom half hold just 12% of the state's enrollment.
Black enrollment in Maine surged 50% in nine years, driven by African immigrant families in Lewiston and Portland, even as total enrollment hit a low.
Caddo Parish lost 5,611 students since 2019, a 14.8% decline that leads Louisiana and has triggered school closures.
Idaho's absenteeism rate dropped just 0.4 points last year after sharp improvements in 2023 and 2024, leaving 44,640 students still habitually absent.
18 of 41 Delaware districts set enrollment records in 2024-25 while only 3 hit lows. Sussex County growth and charter expansion drive the rare ratio.
White students hit 50.0% of Alabama enrollment in 2024-25, crossing below the majority line as Hispanic students nearly doubled over nine years.
NJ chronic absenteeism dropped from 18.1% to 14.9% since 2022, but 172 districts are worse than their pandemic peak and 47 keep getting worse every year.
DESE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 855,081 students, a 25-year low that extends an accelerating decline.
A pre-COVID trend line projected Illinois would have nearly 2 million students in 2025. Instead it has 1.85 million, a gap driven by outmigration, fewer births, and pandemic fallout.
K enrollment fell 13% since 2015 while total enrollment dropped just 1.9%. The pipeline math means Iowa's steepest losses are still ahead.
HIDOE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 163,651 students statewide — down 3,425, the largest non-COVID loss on record.
Pre-K enrollment grew 145% since 2005, now reaching 93% of kindergarten. One in three new students Nebraska gained came from expanding pre-K.
Nearly one in three Montana districts are at their lowest enrollment ever recorded, including every major city's elementary system.
Mississippi's largest school district saw Black students overtake White enrollment for the first time in 2024, completing a demographic transformation two decades in the making.
Minnesota lost 21,120 students during COVID. Five years later, only 1,092 have returned, a 5.2% recovery rate that masks a deeper structural shift.
After losing 73% of its students over two decades, Detroit's reconstituted district posted the largest gain of any big Michigan district in 2024-25.
KSDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 447,803 students statewide — a three-year decline of 12,539 and the lowest count since 2011.
Fairbanks lost 2,017 students in seven years, closed three schools, and still faces a structural deficit. The decline is accelerating.
MPS enrollment has fallen 28.6% since 2006, shedding 26,219 students while the state declined just 7.7%. A $46 million budget gap is forcing 260 job cuts.
After 35 years in Washington education and more than two decades in Enumclaw, Jill Burnes steps into the superintendent role as the district hits record enrollment and builds a $65M school.
Pennsylvania's chronic absenteeism rate remains at 20.4%, still 6 percentage points above pre-COVID levels. Recovery is decelerating.
Nevada added 2,254 pre-K seats since 2019 even as overall enrollment fell by 27,000 students. The expansion faces a funding cliff as federal grants expire.
Idaho added 3,500 students a year for 17 years. Since 2023, it has lost nearly 5,000, and the gap between actual enrollment and pre-COVID projections widens every year.
At the current rate of decline, Hawaii will enroll fewer than 160,000 public school students within five years, 13,682 below the state's pre-COVID trajectory.
Colorado's charter schools doubled their market share in a decade, but growth has collapsed to 0.3%, raising questions about the sector's ceiling.
Hispanic students now make up 49.2% of Arizona public school enrollment, up from 45.7% eight years ago. White enrollment has fallen 18% in the same period.
White enrollment drops to 24.2% of Texas public schools, the lowest share on record, as the state's demographic transformation reaches the suburban ring.
Colleton, Darlington, Fairfield, McCormick, Marion, and Williamsburg have lost a combined 8,634 students since 2015. All six are at all-time lows.
Ohio public school enrollment fell to 1,718,829, its lowest in at least 12 years. The 19,611-student drop is the second-largest on record.
Kindergarten enrollment fell to 163,820 in 2026, down 19.2% from its 2013 peak and 7,994 students below the COVID trough — a signal that deeper declines are coming.
New Mexico kindergarten enrollment fell 20% since 2016 while 12th grade grew, inverting the pipeline that once fed the state's schools.
Kindergarten enrollment fell 13.1% from its 2020 peak. North Dakota now has fewer entering students than graduates, a first since the Bakken boom.
Massachusetts' 29 voc-tech districts grew 19.3% since 2008 while traditional districts lost 93,000 students and 8,100 seats go unfilled.
Nine Indiana school corporations lost enrollment every single year from 2017 through 2026. Six suburban districts grew every year. Combined, the losers shed twice what the winners gained.
Connecticut's 2025-26 enrollment dropped 2.1%, the largest non-COVID decline since 2007. First grade alone lost 4,322 students as the 2024 rebound proved a mirage.
Nine Washington districts report enrollment growth over 200%, but the students are virtual, the operators are for-profit, and the classrooms are empty.
White enrollment fell from 82% to 69% as Hispanic students nearly quadrupled and multiracial identification surged across the state.
187 of 541 Oklahoma districts are at all-time low enrollment in 2025-26, including Tulsa, OKC, Moore, and Union. The decline spans every size class.
Maine public school enrollment fell to 168,923 in 2025-26, the lowest in at least a decade, driven by three years of accelerating losses.
Hispanic enrollment rose 41% in seven years, adding 22,000 students even as Louisiana lost enrollment. Growth is spreading beyond Jefferson Parish.
Florida K enrollment fell 12.1% since 2015. The state now graduates 42,930 more students than it enrolls in kindergarten each year.
Delaware's only Greek immersion charter has grown 150% over 10 consecutive years, becoming the state's most racially diverse district in the process.
Alabama public school enrollment dropped to 714,363 in 2025-26, the lowest in at least 12 years, as the state loses students to demographics, school choice, and immigration enforcement.
ALSDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 714,363 students statewide — a four-year decline streak and the lowest point in over a decade.
Traditional districts lost 14,955 students in 2026 as the $100M voucher program awarded 14,000 scholarships. The overlap is striking but complex.
COVID pushed NJ kindergarten chronic absenteeism past high school. Two years later, K is still 5.8 points above baseline while high school nearly back.
Suburban Chicago districts are posting double-digit sped rate increases. TSD 113 went from 15% to 34% in six years.
Iowa's second-largest school district crossed below 50% white enrollment in 2026. It is one of nine districts to flip in three years.
Since peaking at 282,309 in 2013, West Virginia public schools have shed 52,663 students with no reprieve, reaching an all-time low of 229,646.
After 15 straight growth years adding 10,000 students, LPS lost 334 in 2026. Shrinking K classes and white enrollment decline drive the reversal.
Native American enrollment fell 12.3% since 2018, nearly double the 6.4% white decline. Reservation districts lost 1,391 students across seven tribal nations.
Once Mississippi's second-largest district, Jackson Public Schools has shed 39.4% of enrollment since 2016, closed 23 schools, and dropped to third in size.
After 18 straight years of growth that doubled their numbers, Hispanic students in Minnesota declined by 137 in 2025-26.
More than a third of Arkansas districts are at their lowest enrollment since 2005, while growth concentrates in NWA suburbs and charter schools.
Twenty-nine of Alaska's districts are at their smallest enrollment ever recorded, including both Anchorage and Fairbanks. Together they hold 60% of the state's students.
Wisconsin public school enrollment fell to 805,881 in 2025-26, an all-time low capping a decade of unbroken decline that has erased nearly 70,000 students.
Nevada's two virtual charter schools shed 2,400 students since 2019, but for very different reasons: one was forced to close grades K-8, the other is in freefall.
CEPI releases 2024-25 enrollment data showing Michigan at 1,366,207 students, a 20-year low.
Maine DOE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 168,923 students statewide — down 2,134, the largest non-COVID loss on record.
96.5% of Idaho 9th graders now reach 12th grade, up from 87.7% two decades ago. The 9th grade retention bulge has nearly vanished.
Hawaii's public schools consistently enroll 10-17% more 9th graders than the prior year's 8th grade class, a pattern driven by the state's outsized private school sector.
Only 49 of 184 Colorado districts have returned to pre-COVID enrollment. The state is 72,839 students below its pre-pandemic trajectory.
Arizona public school enrollment has fallen every year since its 2020 peak, and the losses are accelerating. The 2026 decline alone nearly quadrupled the 2023 loss.
TEA releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 5,483,304 students statewide — down 47,195, the first non-pandemic decline in 22 years.
After fully recovering from COVID and reaching a peak of 796,780 students, South Carolina lost 7,694 in a single year. The 800,000 milestone will not be reached.
ODEW releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 1,718,829 students statewide — down 19,611, the second-largest annual loss on record.
NYC Geographic Districts 8, 9, and 10 have shed nearly a third of their enrollment since 2012, with kindergarten down 46% and no year of recovery in sight.
More than a third of New Mexico's districts are at their smallest enrollment ever recorded, including nine of the 10 largest.
West Fargo Schools has added students every year since 2009, more than doubling to 13,211. The gap with Bismarck is now just 466 students.
Framingham's white enrollment share fell 28.7 percentage points since 2015, the steepest decline of any mid-size Massachusetts district, as Hispanic students became the majority.
IPS lost a third of its students while outer suburbs hit record highs. Now the first-ring suburbs are declining too.
EL enrollment grew 80.5% over 15 years while CT lost 66,739 students. In 2025-26, 2,157 English learners disappeared from the rolls, the largest non-COVID drop on record.
Washington's Native American student count fell from 24,768 to 12,622 in 16 years. A reclassification explains part of the drop, but not the decline since.
Pre-K enrollment tripled from 1,280 to 3,284 over two decades, but most of the growth traces to a 2010 reporting rule change, not new classrooms.
Anadarko Public Schools has declined 10 consecutive years, losing 586 students and 31% of its enrollment since 2016. No Oklahoma district has a longer active streak.
Traditional public school enrollment in Louisiana fell from 643,986 to 578,632 since 2019, a 10.1% decline with no year of recovery and a 2026 cliff that erased 15,424 students.
Pasco County added students every year for a decade. In 2026, the streak broke with a loss of 350, a sign Florida's growth corridors have hit a ceiling.
Christina's special education rate hit 29.5% as enrollment fell 21.8% over a decade, creating a structural mismatch between growing service needs and a shrinking revenue base.
Park City School District's enrollment fell 15.3% since 2019 as housing costs push working families out of the resort community.
The gap between where Oregon's enrollment was heading and where it actually is grew by nearly 12,000 students in a single year, and the forces driving the divergence are accelerating.
High school enrollment fell for the first time in a decade, joining K-8 in decline. The pipeline that sustained Maryland's secondary schools has run dry.
Illinois identified nearly 50,000 homeless students in 2024-25, a six-year high. The steepest rates are in rural southern Illinois, not Chicago.
Of 223 Iowa districts that lost students during COVID, 164 are now below even their pandemic lows. Iowa is losing students faster than during COVID.
Braxton, Pocahontas, and Roane counties have lost students every single year for 15 straight years, the longest active decline streaks in West Virginia.
NH kindergarten enrollment fell to 10,727 in 2025-26, the lowest non-COVID year on record. The private-school buffer that once padded first grade is fading.
Nebraska's meatpacking corridor has transformed: Grand Island crossed majority-Hispanic in 2013, Schuyler hit 88%, and second-wave towns are following.
After a decade of growth, Montana's public school enrollment has fallen for three straight years to a 9-year low, erasing the gains of the growth era and costing districts millions.
MDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 424,534 students statewide, down 10,725 from the prior year.
MDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 873,175 students statewide, erasing last year's bounce and confirming the COVID floor.
Bryant School District's white enrollment share fell 44 percentage points in 21 years, but total enrollment grew 43%. It is the largest growth-driven demographic shift in Arkansas.
Three rural districts host correspondence programs enrolling 14,379 students statewide. As traditional schools close, this parallel system keeps growing.
More than 40% of Oregon's school districts enroll fewer than 500 students, but they collectively educate just 16,195 children — while virtual charters quietly reshape the rural map.
Providence, Cranston, Pawtucket, Warwick, Woonsocket, and East Providence all remain below pre-pandemic enrollment, a combined loss of 7,589 students.
RI public schools have lost students every year since 2019-20. The six-year streak erased 9,728 students and shows no sign of ending.
Portsmouth and South Kingstown each posted 15 consecutive years of enrollment decline, losing a combined 2,002 students since 2010-11.
English learners now make up 15.2% of Rhode Island enrollment, up from 5.9% in 2011-12, even as growth nearly stopped in 2025-26.
Rhode Island's special-education share hit 19.2% in 2025-26, nearing one in five students, as the state added 3,328 students to the rolls since 2020-21.
DPI releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 805,881 students statewide — down 8,121, continuing a decade of unbroken decline.
Clark County School District is 48.9% Hispanic and 18.7% white. The district lost a third of its white students in seven years as Nevada's demographic transformation accelerates.
Idaho's public preschool enrollment grew 65% since 2002 despite zero state funding, driven entirely by district-level decisions and federal special education dollars.
Hawaii enrolled 167,076 students in 2024-25, breaching the 170,000 floor for the second year running. Honolulu accounts for 92% of the loss.
District 27J in Brighton grew 42% since 2015, making it Colorado's fastest-growing traditional district even as the state lost nearly 18,000 students.
ADE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 1,073,531 students statewide, down 25,998 from the prior year.
South Carolina crossed the majority-minority threshold in 2019 and the shift is accelerating, driven by a 94.5% surge in Hispanic enrollment and a 14.9% drop in Black students.
After a one-year migrant-driven reprieve in 2024, New York's enrollment plunged by 37,176 students, the worst non-COVID drop since 2012.
The flagship Albuquerque charter has posted 10 straight years of growth, but the three-campus network just recorded its first enrollment decline.
After adding 23,192 students since 2009, North Dakota's enrollment declined in 2026 for the first time outside a pandemic year, signaling a structural shift.
Cape Cod school enrollment has fallen from 30,970 to 18,925 since 1999, nearly six times the state's rate of decline, as vacation homes replace year-round families.
South Bend Community School Corp has declined every year for a decade, losing 5,829 students and falling from Indiana's 5th- to 11th-largest district.
Connecticut kindergarten enrollment has fallen 21% since 2011, losing 8,431 students. First grade is down 25%. The pipeline feeding the state's schools is collapsing from the bottom up.
Section 504 disability accommodations quadrupled since 2010, but affluent districts identify students at six times the rate of high-poverty peers.
South Dakota's third-largest district added 4,682 students since 2007 without a single down year, but the growth rate is falling fast.
K-3 enrollment has fallen 12.2% since 2016, losing 26,484 students. High schools are still growing, but the shrinking cohorts will arrive there by 2030.
LDOE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 578,632 traditional public school students — down 15,424, the largest non-COVID loss on record.
Only 37% of Florida districts have returned to 2019 enrollment. Recovery peaked in 2023 and is now reversing, with the largest districts hit hardest.
Delaware added 7,893 English learners in 10 years, a 69.5% surge that accounts for more than two-thirds of the state's total enrollment growth.
Utah enrolls 17,532 more boys than girls, a ratio that has barely moved in 13 years. The gap tracks biology, not policy, but niche charters amplify it.
Rhode Island charter enrollment hit 13,441 students in 2025-26, crossing 10% of public-school enrollment for the first time as traditional districts shed 20,664 students.
Oregon kindergarten enrollment fell to 34,490 in 2026, down 18.5% from 2020. The shrinking pipeline locks in at least a decade of further decline.
Maryland's westernmost district has lost students every year since 2020, the longest active decline streak in the state, with no grade level spared.
Only 155 of 865 Illinois districts have recovered to pre-pandemic levels. The losses are concentrated in the largest districts, where 92% remain underwater.
White enrollment in Iowa public schools fell from 396,263 to 346,681 since 2015, an unbroken 11-year decline that accelerated 3.6x in recent years.
Excel Academy RI grew from 117 to 444 students in three years, leading the state in gains even as Rhode Island lost 9,728 students.
Nine West Virginia county school systems are under state takeover or emergency. All nine have declining enrollment. The financial crises follow the students out the door.
New Hampshire added 1,230 pre-K students since 2012 even as the state lost 30,483 K-12 students. But growth has stalled, and half of districts still offer no program.
Nebraska grew enrollment during COVID and recovered fully by 2025. But 2026 brought the first post-recovery decline, and 55% of districts never came back.
OPI releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 142,071 students statewide — down 8,502 from peak, the lowest in nine years of records.
Multiracial enrollment grew 408% since 2010, making two-or-more-races the fastest-growing demographic group in Arkansas schools by a wide margin.
Alaska Native enrollment fell from 29,042 to 26,356 since 2020, a 9.2% decline that accounts for 82% of the state's total enrollment loss.
Nevada added 9,224 special ed students since 2021 while total enrollment fell, pushing the IEP rate to 14.8% and straining a system short on staff.
Eastern Idaho's largest district added 5,943 students over two decades. Three consecutive years of decline signal the growth era is over.
With enrollment down 19,774 from its 2014 peak, Hawaii's DOE faces 34 schools below the 250-student funding floor. Redistricting comes first; closures wait until 2028.
Colorado lost 7,400 white kindergartners since 2016 while Hispanic K enrollment barely moved, collapsing a 13,000-student gap to 6,174.
SCDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 789,086 students statewide — down 7,694 from a record high, the first non-COVID decline in a decade.
New York's charter sector grew from 18,000 to 190,000 students in 21 years while traditional schools lost 567,000. But growth has stalled below 2% annually.
English learner enrollment grew 4.3% since 2019 while total enrollment fell 11%. Permian Basin immigration and post-Yazzie reforms drive the gap.
NDDPI releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing a 233-student decline, ending a 16-year growth era driven by the Bakken oil boom.
Massachusetts special education hit an all-time high of 21.3% in 2025-26 as the state added 27,158 students to IEP rolls while overall enrollment fell.
Nearly one in three Indiana school corporations enrolled fewer students in 2025-26 than in any year since 2016, including seven of the state's 10 largest systems.
White enrollment fell 35.9% since 2011, transforming suburbs like East Haven and South Windsor from 75% white to below 50%. Fifteen districts crossed the majority-minority threshold.
More Washington school districts sit at record-low enrollment than in any year since 2010, erasing three years of post-COVID recovery.
Karen refugees and Hispanic workers made Huron South Dakota's most diverse district. Enrollment up 41.6% as white share fell from 80% to 38%.
Inner-ring OKC metro districts lost 19,694 students in a decade while outer-ring suburbs gained 8,469, reshaping the metro's school map.
Florida's only majority-Black county lost 27.1% of enrollment since 2015, the steepest decline of any sizable district in the state.
Sussex County's beach district added 2,217 students in a decade, outpacing every traditional district in Delaware. The high school is already over capacity.
Grade 12 enrollment now exceeds kindergarten by 10,463 students, completing a 20,000-student swing that took just 12 years.
Rhode Island gained just 7 English learners in 2025-26 after adding 1,930 the year before. What a sudden freeze means for staffing and services.
Oregon's 9th-to-12th grade cohort survival rate fell below 100% for the first time on record, signaling the end of a longstanding senior enrollment bump.
Every year, thousands more students enroll in Maryland's 9th grade than left 8th grade. The gap peaked at 13,775 during COVID and remains above 9,000.
Four Illinois districts declined for 15 consecutive years, the longest streaks in the state. All four finally broke in 2023-2025, but three have already resumed losing students.
Iowa's suburban donut effect in one metro: Des Moines lost 4,650 students since 2015 while 14 surrounding suburbs gained nearly 14,000.
Berkeley and Doddridge are the only West Virginia counties with more students than in 2019. The other 53 are still falling, and 52 are falling faster.
Farmington's enrollment fell from 1,379 to 698 in 14 years, the steepest decline among mid-size NH districts, raising viability questions.
Hispanic enrollment in Nebraska more than doubled over 22 years, adding 46,586 students. In 2026, the growth reversed.
More than half of Arkansas's 259 school districts enroll fewer than 1,000 students, but together they educate only 17.7% of the state's children.
Anchorage shed 4,530 students in seven years, exceeding the entire state's enrollment decline. Three schools will close and 300 teaching positions will be cut.
Kindergarten enrollment fell from 35,834 to 30,490 since 2019 while 12th grade grew 11.5%, creating a pipeline inversion that guarantees years of declining enrollment ahead.
Gem Prep grew from a single Pocatello charter to Idaho's first multi-campus network in nine years, now enrolling 12% of all charter students statewide.
Elementary enrollment has fallen 10.5% while high school holds steady. A 2014 policy change and declining births created a demographic wave now reshaping every level.
81 of 186 Colorado school districts recorded their lowest enrollment in 12 years in 2025-26, including Jefferson County, Douglas County, and Cherry Creek.
NYSED releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 2,447,074 students statewide — down 37,176, the largest non-COVID loss since 2012.
White students now represent just 19.6% of New Mexico's public school enrollment, the first time the share has fallen below 20%.
Massachusetts Black enrollment reached 93,651 in 2026, an all-time record, driven by Haitian immigration into gateway cities even as Boston lost 3,057 Black students since 2019.
White enrollment fell from 69% to 61% of Indiana's public schools since 2016 while every other racial group except Native American grew.
Hartford dropped from Connecticut's largest district to fourth in 15 years, losing 5,802 students as CREC magnets nearly doubled and kindergarten enrollment was cut in half.
Lake Washington grew 30% since 2010, climbing from 6th to 2nd largest in Washington. Asian students now outnumber white in a district reshaped by tech.
Nearly one in six South Dakota school districts is at its lowest enrollment ever recorded, including the state's second-largest district, Rapid City.
Thirty-six Oklahoma districts enroll fewer than 100 students combined, serving just 0.3% of the state's children while lawmakers debate consolidation.
More than half of Florida school districts now enroll fewer white students than students of color, a threshold crossed in 2025.
Delaware's 9th-grade classes are 18% larger than their 8th-grade cohorts, a structural anomaly driven by the state's unique vo-tech choice system.
Utah added 23,009 special education students over 12 years while total enrollment grew by a fraction of that rate, pushing SpEd to 13.7% of all students.
After a near-flat year hinted at a floor, Rhode Island lost 2,149 students and dropped below 135,000 for the first time.
David Douglas, the most racially diverse district in Oregon, has lost 2,219 students since 2010. White enrollment fell 44%, but the district grew more diverse as it shrank.
Maryland kindergarten enrollment has fallen 8.8% in a decade, with 20 of 24 districts below pre-COVID levels and no recovery in sight.
White students account for 92% of Illinois's enrollment decline. The south and southwest suburbs are transforming fastest.
Iowa's Pacific Islander enrollment grew 276% since 2015, concentrated in six meatpacking towns. The growth traces to Marshallese families.
Of 55 West Virginia districts, only three have grown since 2011. Berkeley County added 1,996 students while the state lost 52,484. But 2026 brought the first crack.
New Hampshire has 44 districts with fewer than 100 students, yet those districts serve just 1.5% of enrollment. A look at the state's extreme fragmentation.
Bennington Public Schools has grown every single year for 21 consecutive years, adding 3,942 students and climbing from 80th to 12th in statewide rankings.
Fueled by Walmart's economic engine, Bentonville has doubled in size since 2005 while Little Rock lost a quarter of its students. The crossover happened last year.
Alaska public school enrollment fell to 125,317 in 2025-26, a new low in the dataset, as 29 of 53 districts hit record-low enrollment and outmigration enters its 13th year.
Pinecrest Academy of Nevada grew 91.6% since 2019, closing in on Somerset as the state's largest charter. Five Academica-managed brands now enroll nearly half of all charter students.
Hazard Independent dropped from 43.2% to 22.5% chronic absenteeism in two years — the biggest turnaround in Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia.
Vallivue has grown 175% since 2002 as Boise lost 4,604 students. The Treasure Valley's suburban donut is reshaping Idaho education.
Honolulu enrollment fell to 103,985 in 2024-25, its lowest on record. At the current pace, it drops below 100,000 within three years.
Three virtual operators now enroll more students than Colorado Springs 11, reshaping state enrollment data and raising oversight questions.
New Mexico lost 16,782 students during the pandemic. It has lost another 19,996 since. Only 31.6% of districts have returned to 2019 enrollment.
Massachusetts enrollment fell to 900,490 in 2026, the lowest level since 1995 and just 490 students above a threshold the state hasn't breached in more than three decades.
Charter enrollment grew from 29,906 to 56,675 since 2016 as 72 new schools opened. The sector now enrolls 5.5% of students, serving a far more diverse population than traditional schools.
Connecticut's public school enrollment dropped to 497,760 in 2025-26, crossing below 500,000 for the first time since the early 2000s after a brief and puzzling one-year reprieve.
Washington, one of few states tracking nonbinary students, saw Gender X enrollment surge from 77 to nearly 5,000 before declining two years running.
Most states lost students during COVID. South Dakota added 2,275. Three years later, the growth era is over and decline is accelerating.
Oklahoma's headline enrollment dipped just 0.9% since 2016. Strip out virtual charters and the picture is five times worse.
32 of Florida's 67 regular school districts enrolled fewer students in 2025-26 than in any year since 2015.
Delaware added 11,728 special education students in a decade, pushing its IEP rate to 22% while the national average sits at 15%.
Utah's only majority-Hispanic traditional district has lost students every year since 2019, with Hispanic and white families leaving in near-equal numbers.
White students fell below 50% of Rhode Island enrollment for the first time as the state posted its steepest drop since the pandemic.
Beaverton is closer to overtaking Salem-Keizer than at any point in at least 17 years. Both districts are losing students, but on very different terms.
Twelve Maryland districts that gained students last year reversed to losses in 2025-26, leaving Kent County as the state's sole gainer.
Cook County posted back-to-back enrollment gains after losing 111,000 students. English learner growth is the engine. The rest of Illinois kept falling.
131 Iowa districts hit 12-year enrollment lows in 2026. Among the 10 largest, only Waukee grew while seven scraped their all-time floor.
In Clay County, 33.5% of students are classified as homeless under federal law, eight times the state rate and a window into rural WV's housing crisis.
Berlin has declined every year since 2011-12, the longest unbroken streak in New Hampshire, and now enrolls fewer than 1,000 students.
Nebraska kindergarten enrollment hit an all-time low of 24,170 in 2025-26, falling below even the 2005 baseline while Grade 12 set its own record high.
Springdale enrolls 2,922 Pacific Islander students, 13.9% of its total and 56.8% of all PI students in Arkansas, driven by the largest Marshallese diaspora community in the continental US.
DEED releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing Alaska at a seven-year low of 125,317 students.
49 of 70 Nevada school districts now have student bodies where white students are less than half, up from 30 of 52 seven years ago.
Kentucky's 54,712 English learners have a 22.7% chronic absence rate — below the state average. EL enrollment grew 22% while attendance improved.
Three Creek enrolls 5 students. Two more districts have single digits. Idaho now has 17 districts under 100 students, the most in 25 years.
Hawaii's 38 charter schools added 1,198 students since 2020 while traditional schools across all four counties lost 15,210. Charter share hits 7.8%.
Colorado's second-largest district has declined every year since 2016, closing 21 schools and facing a $49 million deficit.
Espanola Public Schools shed 1,475 students over the past decade, a 37.3% decline that ranks second-worst among mid-size New Mexico districts.
Charter enrollment grew 11% since 2019 while traditional public schools lost 55,933 students. The gap widened during COVID and never closed.
IPS shed 1,281 students in 2025-26, the steepest non-pandemic drop in a decade of decline. Marion County charters now enroll nearly double.
CSDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 497,760 students statewide — down 10,640, the largest loss since 2007.
Washington's homeless student count tripled to 43,542 over 15 years before a suspicious 28% drop in 2026 that may reflect funding cuts, not improvement.
South Dakota's kindergarten enrollment has fallen from 12,082 to 10,954 since 2022, the sharpest sustained decline on record. The shrinking pipeline foreshadows years of total enrollment loss.
Five years after the pandemic, only 136 of 515 Oklahoma districts have recovered to 2019 levels. The state's brief rebound masked a deeper structural decline.
St. Johns County added 17,222 students over 11 years, but its growth rate collapsed from 7.8% to 0.3% in 2026, the lowest in its streak.
Hispanic enrollment grew 42% in a decade, adding 9,211 students and accounting for 80% of Delaware's net growth. Sussex County districts are transforming fastest.
Wallace Stegner Academy went from 624 to 2,848 students in seven years, becoming Utah's third-largest charter by opening campuses in majority-Hispanic neighborhoods.
RIDE releases October 2025 enrollment data showing a 2,149-student drop, the steepest decline since COVID upended the 2020-21 school year.
Only 28% of Oregon districts have returned to pre-pandemic enrollment. The non-recovery is accelerating, and zero large districts have bounced back.
Baltimore County Public Schools fell to 104,031 students in 2025-26, its lowest on record. The 1,913-student drop was the steepest in five years.
Suburban Chicago HSDs built for monolingual instruction are absorbing triple-digit EL growth. Joliet 204 went from 494 to 1,642 English learners.
Postville's Hispanic share surged from 48.5% to 74.8% in 11 years, making this meatpacking town Iowa's most Hispanic district.
Seven coal counties once enrolled 13,372 more students than three Eastern Panhandle counties. Fifteen years of divergent trajectories have nearly erased that lead.
Of 173 traditional public school districts in New Hampshire, 148 have lost students since 2012. The 21 that gained added just 895 students combined.
OPS was 46% white in 2005. It is 20.3% today. Hispanic students now outnumber white students two to one in Nebraska's largest district.
Arkansas's two virtual schools enrolled 11,559 students in 2025-26, nearly tripling since 2020 and capturing 42% of all enrollment growth statewide.
Esmeralda County enrolled just 69 students in 2025-26, a new all-time low. The district has lost 28% of its enrollment since 2019 in a county of 710 people.
Bowling Green Independent, a diverse refugee-rich district of 5,229, posted a 12.6% chronic rate — less than half Kentucky's 25% average.
Vallivue has nearly tripled since 2002, climbing from Idaho's 20th to 6th largest district while neighbors Nampa and Caldwell shrink.
Honolulu, Hawaii County, Maui, and Kauai all hit all-time enrollment lows simultaneously in 2024-25, while charter schools reach a record high.
Colorado public schools lost 10,272 students in 2025-26, the largest non-COVID drop on record, pushing enrollment to its lowest point in more than a decade.
New Mexico's charter sector lost 508 students in 2025-26, its first enrollment decline since at least 2019, as brick-and-mortar charters contract.
Massachusetts white enrollment share has fallen every year for 33 years, from 79.3% to 50.8%. At the current pace, the state crosses below 50% in 2027.
Hispanic enrollment surpassed Black enrollment statewide in 2020 and the gap has widened to 16,163 students. Then growth stopped.
Only 117 of 316 Washington school districts have recovered to pre-COVID enrollment levels. In 2026, even the recovery stalled.
South Dakota's second-largest district has lost nearly 2,000 students since 2012 while the state grew. The kindergarten pipeline is collapsing.
Tulsa Public Schools has shed 8,417 students since 2016. The suburbs ringing it have absorbed thousands, creating a metropolitan donut pattern that is reshaping school funding across the region.
White enrollment fell 6.9% since 2024, accounting for 86% of the state's total student loss. The decline is three times faster than the pre-COVID rate.
Delaware's COVID enrollment dip lasted a single year. The state bounced back 2.4x its losses and hit an all-time high, but Wilmington-area districts never recovered.
Multiracial enrollment grew 108.5% since 2014, the fastest-growing racial category in Utah schools. But after a decade of gains, growth stalled in 2025.
Multiracial students grew 25.3% in a decade, but 2026 marks the first decline. What the plateau reveals about identity and enrollment forms.
Grade 3 lost 2,470 students in 2025-26, more than any other grade. The pandemic's kindergarten disruption is now a rolling wave reshaping Maryland schools grade by grade.
Illinois has lost 229,000 students since its 2007 peak. Four in five large districts are shrinking. The outer suburbs are the only exception.
236 of 329 Iowa school districts lost enrollment in 2025-26, matching the COVID-year share. Four districts have declined every year for 11 straight years.
Kindergarten enrollment fell 27.2% since 2010-11, far outpacing the state's overall 18.6% decline. The pipeline is collapsing from the bottom up.
New Hampshire's capital city has shed 1,087 students over 15 years, declining in 13 of 14 years. The state's seat of government is shrinking faster than the state itself.
Nebraska hit an all-time enrollment high of 367,549 in 2025. Then 2,226 students disappeared, driven by losses in both white and Hispanic enrollment.
Four Northwest Arkansas districts grew from 9.8% to 14.2% of state enrollment since 2005, gaining 21,488 students while the Delta lost nearly as many.
Five years after the pandemic, 26 of 51 Nevada districts remain below 2019 enrollment. Nearly every traditional county district is among them.
Seven large districts show Black students with lower chronic absenteeism than white students — a reversal of the national pattern that raises questions about what drives racial attendance gaps.
Idaho's enrollment split: charter and suburban growth masks accelerating losses at the state's largest and oldest school districts.
Hawaii's 2014 kindergarten age cutoff change wiped out a third of K enrollment overnight. Ten years later, only 15% of the gap has been recovered.
White students fell below 50% of Colorado public school enrollment for the first time in 2024-25, as the state's demographic transformation reshapes classrooms from Denver suburbs to the Western Slope.
New Mexico lost 8,333 students in 2025-26, the second-largest annual drop on record, as post-COVID losses now run 2.3 times faster than the old normal.
Boston Public Schools enrolled 44,416 students in 2026, its lowest total in 33 years of data. The district has lost 19,346 students since its 1998 peak.
Indiana lost 11,724 students in 2025-26, erasing last year's surprise gain and pushing enrollment below its pandemic low for the first time.
Pasco and Richland both grew 30% since 2010 while most of Washington lost students. Then all three Tri-Cities districts declined in the same year.
Hispanic enrollment nearly quadrupled in 17 years, reshaping schools from Huron to Sioux Falls and closing in on Native American enrollment statewide.
350 of 539 Oklahoma districts shrank in 2025-26, the broadest non-COVID decline on record, with losses distributed far beyond the largest urban systems.
88% of Florida's regular school districts declined in 2025-26, matching COVID-era breadth without a pandemic. Every size tier lost ground.
Delaware's fastest-growing district gained 39.9% enrollment in a decade, climbing from sixth- to third-largest while its white share dropped from 66% to 45%.
After seven years of Granite District losses, Jordan has overtaken its Salt Lake County neighbor for the first time, a crossover that exposes the valley's deepening geographic divide.
Portland SD 1J dropped to 42,106 students in 2026, its lowest in at least 17 years, accelerating a decline that has erased all growth since 2010.
Frederick County, Maryland's only large district consistently adding students, lost 123 in 2025-26, joining 22 other districts in decline.
Nearly half of Illinois public school students are economically disadvantaged. The rate gap between the richest and poorest districts spans 98 points.
Davenport lost students every year for 11 straight years, shedding 3,325 while neighbors grew. Charters now add pressure.
West Virginia's poorest county lost 1,484 students since 2011, the steepest decline of any county in the state. Kindergarten enrollment has been cut in half.
New Hampshire's virtual charter school grew from 63 to 539 full-time students in 14 years, even as statewide enrollment fell 16%.
NDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing Nebraska's first non-pandemic enrollment decline in 20 years.
White student share has declined every year for two decades in Arkansas, from 69.4% to 56.5%, as Hispanic enrollment surged 162% and the multiracial category grew fivefold.
SPCSA's 70,534 students surpass Washoe County's 63,655, making the charter authority Nevada's second-largest school system in a single year.
JCPS chronic absenteeism dropped to 33.1% but 32,670 students still miss too much school. The Black-white gap reaches 10.4 points.
Idaho Home Learning Academy appeared in 2025 with 7,504 students, a $47.8M budget, and test scores trailing the state by 18 points in math.
Every Hawaii county has fewer students than before the pandemic. The post-trough losses since 2021 are nearly double the initial COVID hit.
CDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 870,793 students statewide — down 10,272, the largest non-COVID loss on record.
New Mexico's Permian Basin oil boom drove Carlsbad enrollment up 32%, then a bust erased most of it. The district is still the state's only large gainer.
Massachusetts lost 15,442 students in 2025-26, erasing all post-COVID gains and pushing enrollment 10,975 below the pandemic trough to a 31-year low.
IDOE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing an 11,724-student loss that erased last year's rebound and pushed Indiana to a new low.
White enrollment in Washington fell every year since 2010, a decline larger than Seattle, Spokane, and Tacoma combined. The pandemic doubled the pace.
After adding 18,000 students from 2007 to 2019, South Dakota public schools have lost 2,568 from their 2022 peak. The decline quadrupled in 2025.
Tulsa quietly overtook Oklahoma City in 2022 as the state's largest school district. The lead has widened to 1,346 students, but both are shrinking.
Pinellas County has lost students every year since 2016, shedding 20,194 in the longest active decline streak in Florida. The losses are accelerating.
Delaware's charter sector grew 73% in a decade to 15,056 students, nearing the 10% threshold, while traditional schools also gained enrollment.
Four urban districts lost 18,061 students since 2019 while Alpine and Jordan held steady, reshaping the Wasatch Front's educational geography.
Oregon's 26 virtual charters enroll 21,161 students, nearly matching the COVID peak. The growth is structural, and it is distorting rural district data.
Eleven of Maryland's 24 school systems hit their lowest enrollment on record in 2025-26, spanning every region from suburban I-95 to rural Appalachia.
Yorkville CUSD 115 grew 128% in 20 years while 82% of Illinois districts shrank. Now the district is asking voters for $275 million to keep up.
Seven Iowa districts now top 50% Hispanic enrollment, up from four in 2015. Meatpacking towns from Postville to Storm Lake drove the shift.
West Virginia's special education rate has climbed to 21.2%, the highest on record, even as the state lost 52,484 students since 2011. The funding formula has not kept up.
Nearly half of New Hampshire's school districts are at their lowest enrollment ever recorded, including all 10 of the state's largest.
Arkansas's capital city district lost 6,774 students since its 2008 peak as Northwest Arkansas boomed and charter schools multiplied.
Nevada lost 35,047 white students since 2019, a 22% decline that accounts for more than the state's entire enrollment drop. In Clark County, white share fell below one in five.
Kentucky's 21,832 homeless students have a 42.7% chronic absence rate. Foster care students barely improved at all.
Idaho's 12th grade enrollment has surged 43.7% since 2002 while kindergarten grew just 13.1%, creating a pipeline imbalance that guarantees years of further decline.
The Lahaina wildfire accelerated Maui's enrollment decline to its worst single-year loss on record, with the county now down 13% from its 2014 peak.
New Mexico's special education rate hit 20.5% in 2025-26, crossing the one-in-five threshold as total enrollment fell 11% since 2019.
DESE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 900,490 students statewide — down 15,442, erasing four years of post-COVID recovery in a single year.
Washington's English learner population nearly doubled in 16 years to 159,472. The growth reshaped suburban districts and agricultural communities alike.
SD DOE releases 2024-25 enrollment data showing 138,861 students statewide — down 1,726, the largest single-year loss since the state started growing in 2007.
Seven virtual charter schools serve 37,249 students, 5.4% of statewide enrollment. The sector nearly quadrupled in a decade and claims 1 in 10 high schoolers.
In 11 years, Lee County swung from white-plurality to Hispanic-majority, a 15-point shift that mirrors Florida's broader demographic transformation.
Delaware's second-largest district shed 21.8% of its enrollment in a decade while the state hit an all-time high, raising existential questions about its future.
After a decade of unbroken growth, Utah's English learner enrollment fell 5% in 2026. The data points to reclassification, not departures.
Oregon's second-largest district lost 7,645 white students in a decade while Hispanic enrollment grew by 2,351, reshaping schools across the Willamette Valley.
Five years after pandemic losses, 20 of Maryland's 24 school systems remain below 2019-20 enrollment. The gap is widening, not closing.
307 of 860 trackable Illinois districts are at all-time enrollment lows, outnumbering those at record highs by 6 to 1. The biggest districts are hit hardest.
Iowa public school enrollment dropped to 496,617 in 2025-26, crossing below 500,000 for the first time. The three-year loss now exceeds the COVID crash.
Only six of West Virginia's 55 county school districts avoided record-low enrollment in 2026. Just one is growing.
NH's second-largest district dropped below 10,000 students in 2023 and kept falling, losing 20% of enrollment since 2012 as COVID accelerated the decline.
Only 57 of 216 comparable Arkansas districts have recovered to their 2019-20 enrollment levels. The state lost 8,916 students in 2026 alone.
Nevada public school enrollment has fallen 5.4% from its 2020 peak while charter schools nearly doubled their share to 14.9%, reshaping the state's education landscape.
150 of 174 Kentucky districts recorded their lowest chronic absenteeism rate in 2024-25. Only six districts got worse.
Idaho's capital city school district has been shrinking every year since 2017, losing 17% of its enrollment as families move to suburbs and birth rates fall.
Not a single year since 2014 has reversed the trajectory. Hawaii has lost 19,774 students, driven by outmigration, birth declines, and housing.
APS fell from 92,152 to 72,573 students over the past decade, accounting for nearly half of New Mexico's total enrollment loss.
Washington kindergarten enrollment fell 13,609 from its 2020 peak while Grade 12 hit a record 98,754. The pipeline inversion signals decline through 2032.
Oklahoma enrolled 3,533 fewer kindergartners than 12th graders in 2025-26, a first in at least a decade. The inversion locks in years of continued decline.
If pre-pandemic growth had continued, Florida would have 3 million public school students. Instead it has 2.79 million, and the gap grew 70% in one year.
Delaware hit an all-time enrollment high in 2024-25, growing 8.3% over a decade while most states shrink. Hispanic and multiracial growth offset white losses.
Salt Lake City School District's enrollment fell 21.2% from 2019 to 2026, the steepest decline among Utah's large districts, as gentrification and falling birth rates hollow out the capital's classrooms.
More than a third of Oregon school districts are at record-low enrollment in 2026, including seven of the state's 10 largest. The decline is accelerating.
MCPS shed 2,808 students in a single year, falling below its 2016 baseline. Declining births and a collapse in newcomer enrollment are converging.
The smallest enrollment decline in 17 years masks a deeper split: non-EL enrollment is still falling by 30,000 a year while English learner growth papers over the gap.
Des Moines lost 40% of its white students since 2015 as Hispanic enrollment became the district's largest group, reshaping Iowa's capital city schools.
Multiracial enrollment grew nearly ninefold since 2011, overtaking Black students in 2023. West Virginia remains 84% white, but the margins are shifting fast.
New Hampshire lost 8,259 public school students in the 2020-21 COVID year, nearly three times the next-largest annual drop. Five years later, three in four districts have not recovered.
Charter and virtual schools tripled their share of Arkansas enrollment in a decade, reaching 5.9% in 2025-26. Two virtual schools alone account for 42% of the sector.
Clark County lost 14,451 students in 2025-26, its worst year on record, exceeding even COVID. CCSD faces $50M in cuts and 1,200 staff surpluses.
Black students improved less than white students on chronic absenteeism, widening the gap from 5.5 to 6.6 points. But 7 districts reversed the pattern entirely.
Idaho's charter enrollment jumped 53% in a single year when a virtual school converted from traditional to charter status, masking a brick-and-mortar plateau.
Charter enrollment hit a record 13,094 while traditional schools fell to a 15-year low, widening a divergence that accelerated during the pandemic.
New Mexico enrolled 298,353 public school students in 2025-26, crossing below 300,000 for the first time after losing 41,260 students over a decade.
Seattle added 9,000 students over a decade, then lost 5,153 since 2020. A shrinking kindergarten pipeline and $87M budget gap signal structural decline.
OKCPS dropped from 45,577 to 31,104 students since 2016, losing its No. 1 ranking to Tulsa and closing 32 campuses as virtual charters and suburbs absorbed families.
Miami-Dade shed 14,325 students in 2025-26, the biggest single-year drop in its history, as foreign-born registrations collapsed 82%.
In a decade, Delaware went from 43% to 77% majority-minority districts as white enrollment dropped 9 percentage points and Hispanic enrollment surged 42%.
Charter enrollment grew 4.2% while traditional districts lost 14,955 students in 2026, the starkest sector divergence in Utah's history.
White enrollment fell 59,505 in a decade, accelerating post-COVID. Oregon is on track for a majority-minority K-12 system by 2037.
Maryland enrolls 66,244 fewer students than pre-COVID trends predicted. The gap grew by 16,171 in one year, and 23 of 24 districts lost students.
Black enrollment in Illinois fell 16.7% since 2013, with Chicago Public Schools accounting for more than four-fifths of the decline.
Iowa DOE releases 2025-26 certified enrollment data showing a 7,670-student loss, Iowa's worst non-COVID year and a breach below 500,000.
West Virginia's largest district has declined every year since 2014. The 2026 loss of 997 students was the worst single year on record.
NH charter schools grew from 10 schools and 1,097 students to 35 schools and 6,242 since 2012. Traditional districts lost 35,628 students.
Arkansas enrollment fell by 8,916 students in 2025-26, the largest single-year drop on record and 39% larger than the COVID-year loss, as vouchers and falling birth rates converge.
NDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing a 9,251-student loss, the largest non-COVID decline in state history, as charters double their share.
14 Appalachian districts still exceed 40% chronic absenteeism despite dramatic improvement. Harlan County leads at 51.6%.
After 18 years of growth adding 65,807 students, Idaho enrollment has fallen three straight years. The 2026 drop of 3,970 is the steepest on record.
Honolulu County enrollment has fallen every year since 2014, losing 18,210 students in an 11-year streak driven by housing costs and out-migration.
Native American students fell below 10% of New Mexico enrollment for the first time, dropping to 9.9% as the state lost 5,602 since 2020.
After three years of post-COVID recovery, Washington's K-12 enrollment reversed course in 2025-26, dropping by the most since the pandemic year itself.
Oklahoma's 10,640-student drop in 2025-26 is the largest single-year loss in the dataset, surpassing the pandemic. The state is now 7,395 students below its COVID floor.
Hispanic students overtook white students as the largest racial group in Florida public schools in 2023. By 2026 the gap is 5.3 points, but a sharp reversal hints at trouble.
DDOE releases 2024-25 enrollment data showing 150,591 students statewide — an all-time high, up 1,267 from the prior year.
Granite District quietly became majority-minority as white enrollment fell from 50.2% to 42.9%, while the district lost nearly 10,000 students.
Salem-Keizer SD has lost 5,257 students since 2018, hitting an all-time low of 36,661. Beaverton is just 93 students behind.
After three years of apparent stabilization, Maryland's public schools lost more students in 2025-26 than in any year except the first year of COVID.
Back-to-back enrollment gains at CPS are driven almost entirely by English learner growth. The district remains 21% below its 2005 level.
The 2025-26 school year delivered West Virginia's second-largest enrollment drop ever, eclipsed only by the pandemic. Fifty-two of 55 counties lost students.
New Hampshire's largest district fell from 15,536 to 11,712 students over 14 years, closing schools as per-pupil costs soar.
Arkansas's Hispanic student population declined by 1,157 in 2025-26 after two decades of unbroken growth, with losses concentrated in the NWA poultry corridor.
Kentucky's chronic absenteeism dropped from 30% to 25% in two years, but one in four students still misses too much school and the pre-COVID baseline remains distant.
West Ada overtook Boise by 9 students in 2003. Twenty-three years later, the gap has exploded to 16,202 as suburban sprawl reshapes the Treasure Valley.
Hawaii's K-to-G12 ratio fell below 100% in 2025, a historic inversion driven by a 2014 age cutoff change that permanently shrank kindergarten classes.
A virtual school contract termination stripped 3,342 students from Gallup-McKinley County Schools, exposing how phantom enrollment masked real decline.
White enrollment fell below 50% in 2022 and keeps dropping. Hispanic, multiracial, and Asian growth reshaped the state over 16 years.
Epic Charter Schools grew from 6,037 students to 59,445 in five years, becoming Oklahoma's largest district. Then came the scandal, the collapse, and 500 layoffs.
Florida public schools lost 66,756 students in 2025-26, just 616 fewer than the COVID-era drop. Unlike 2021, there is no pandemic to blame.
After a decade of steady growth, Utah K-12 enrollment peaked in 2023 and has since fallen 2.7%, with the 2026 drop the largest in 25 years.
Oregon lost 9,262 students in 2026, nearly four times the prior year's loss, pushing K-12 enrollment to an all-time low of 535,826.
MSDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing a 9,385-student statewide drop, the largest non-COVID decline in the past decade.
Illinois lost 135,959 students in six years but the decline is decelerating. English learners grew by 83,371 even as overall enrollment fell.
West Virginia lost 21,253 public school students since the Hope Scholarship launched. Decline nearly doubled; 49 of 55 counties hit all-time lows.
NH public schools shed 30,483 students since 2012, a 16% decline. The Josiah Bartlett Center ranks it as the steepest percentage drop in the nation.
Nine Arkansas Delta school districts have shed 13,769 students since 2005, with Helena-West Helena down 69% and five districts below 1,000 students.
KDE releases 2024-25 chronic absenteeism data showing a 25.0% statewide rate, down nearly 5 points in two years but still 7 points above the pre-COVID baseline.
Idaho SDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing a 3,970-student decline, the steepest drop in 25 years of records.
HIDOE releases 2024-25 enrollment data showing 167,076 students statewide — down 2,232, extending the longest decline streak in state history.
NM PED releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 298,353 students statewide — below 300,000 for the first time, down 8,333 from the prior year.
OSPI releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing a 9,099-student loss that erased three years of post-COVID recovery.
OSDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 686,718 students statewide — down 10,640, the largest single-year loss on record.
FDOE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing Florida lost 66,756 students in a single year, nearly matching the COVID-era decline.
USBE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing an 11,479-student loss, Utah's largest single-year decline in 25 years.
ODE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing Oregon lost 9,262 students, its steepest non-pandemic drop on record.
ISBE releases 2024-25 enrollment data showing 1,848,560 students — a ninth consecutive year of decline and the state's lowest enrollment in two decades.
WVDE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 229,646 students statewide — down 7,693, the largest non-pandemic loss on record.
NH DOE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 160,322 students statewide, down 2,337 from the prior year.
ADE releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 465,421 students statewide — down 8,916, the largest single-year loss on record.