N.C.’s largest school district still hemorrhaging students due to pandemic | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the Carolina Journal. The author of this post is David Bass.

    RALEIGH, NC-North Carolina's largest school district continues to feel the impact of pandemic-related reductions in its student population, and those impacts will be felt for at around a decade, according to a report presented to the Wake County Board of Education on Wednesday, Feb. 9.

    Despite the fact that Wake County's population is growing by 62 people per day, the school system shrunk by about 3,000 students during the pandemic, the report from Carolina Demography revealed.

    Where did those students go? To school choice alternatives. Charter school enrollments in Wake County grew by 8.9%, home schools by 20.4%, and private schools by 1.5%.

    "Many families have become more involved in the day-to-day education of their children during the COVID-19 pandemic, which may change their expectations of public education," wrote the authors of the report. "These changing expectations may lead families to choose nonpublic instruction in the future unless public instruction adapts to these new expectations of greater flexibility and individualized instruction."

    "Wake County school officials can reverse the district's steady decline in market share in two simple steps: determine why families choose to leave the district and address identified shortcomings," said Dr. Terry Stoops, director of the Center for Effective Education at the John Locke Foundation. "Instead, they seek to limit competition from public and nonpublic schools. It is the predictable response from a former monopoly losing its hold on a market."

    The report additionally found:

  • "Rapid expansion of charter schools: Between the 2013-14 and 2020-21 school years, Wake charter school enrollments more than doubled, rising from 6,733 to 14,490, an increase of 115%. Charter school market share rose from 3.6% to 7.0% over this time."
  • "Growth of home schools: Between 2013-14 and 2020-21, home school enrollments in Wake County grew from 9,559 to 16,347, an increase of 71%. Home school market share rose from 5.1% to 7.9% over this time."
  • "Steady growth in private school enrollments: Between 2013-14 and 2020-21, private school enrollments rose from 16,249 to 19,385, an increase of 3,136 or 19.3%. With this growth, private schools regained market share from their post-Great Recession low of 8.7% in 2013-14. As of 2020-21, they were at 9.3%."

    Statewide, public school enrollments plummeted by 63,000 students in the 2020-2021 school year. That figure rebounded by 12,571 enrollments for the 2021-2022 school year, an improvement that still leaves districts well short of pre-pandemic levels.
Go Back


Leave a Guest Comment

Your Name or Alias
Your Email Address ( your email address will not be published)
Enter Your Comment ( no code or urls allowed, text only please )




Carolina Journal by Video - XCII: Locke’s Mitch Kokai discusses new report critiquing N.C. nonprofit hospitals Carolina Journal, Editorials, Op-Ed & Politics State Supreme Court rules for Stein in fight over hog farm ‘slush fund’


HbAD0

Latest Op-Ed & Politics

Be careful what you wish for, you may get it
America needs to wake up and get its priorities right
Former President Donald Trump suggested this week that if he becomes president again, he might allow Prince Harry to be deported.
It's a New Year, which means it's time to make resolutions — even for prominent evangelical leaders. The Babylon Bee asked the following well-known figures in the faith what they hope to accomplish in 2024:
Vice President Kamala Harris will visit a Minnesota Planned Parenthood clinic, reportedly the first time a president or vice president has visited an abortion facility.
An eight-mile stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville has been temporarily closed due to a string of “human and bear interactions,” the National Parks Service announced.
University of Wisconsin tried to punish conservatives for the fact that liberals regularly commit crimes to silence opposition
most voters think EU officials not doing a good job on illegal immigration
Come from behind by GOP candidate is a blueprint to 2024

HbAD1

Biden spending and energy policies to blame
Tuberculosis carried by illegal invaders has already infected Texas cattle
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said this week that the only campaign promise President Joe Biden has delivered on as president is the complete dismantling of the U.S. southern border.
Hamas is reeling after losing two of their most cherished leaders on the same day: military commander Saleh al-Arouri, and Harvard President Claudine Gay.
President Joe Biden’s brother told the Internal Revenue Service that Hunter Biden told him he was in business with a “protege of President Xi,” referring to the leader of China, according to notes by an IRS investigator that were divulged during a congressional interview of Jim Biden.
Gov. Roy Cooper seeks a temporary restraining order to block a law changing the composition of the State Board of Elections.
X owner Elon Musk mocked a news segment from ABC News this week that promoted President Joe Biden’s talking points about the Democrat-led Senate’s failed border bill, which critics and many experts have said would make the situation on the border worse.
That’s the question Marguerite Roza of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab sought to answer in a recent webinar on the topic.

HbAD2

 
Back to Top