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Feb 27, 2025 | 
reason.org | Aaron Smith |Jude Schwalbach |Marc Joffe |Rob Arnott
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Jan 27, 2025 | 
reason.org | Aaron Smith |Jude Schwalbach
Good morning,Public school enrollment dropped by 1.2 million during the pandemic. In some states and school districts, this was a continuation of years of declining numbers of students. Over the long term, the National Center for Education Statistics estimates that enrollment will drop by another 2.7 million students by 2031-2032.
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Jan 16, 2025 | 
reason.org | Aaron Smith
Public school enrollment is falling fast, a trend that is likely to persist into the next decade. Between 2019-2020 and 2022-2023, public schools lost 1.2 million students, and the National Center for Education Statistics projects enrollment will drop by another 2.7 million students by 2031-2032. With falling birthrates and parents increasingly looking to K-12 alternatives—such as private schools and homeschooling—state and local policymakers will need to adapt to the new enrollment reality.
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Jan 6, 2025 | 
reason.org | Aaron Smith
School closures are becoming a fixture on school board meeting agendas, with places such as , Philadelphia, Seattle, and many others grappling with under-enrolled public schools. Public schools have lost nearly 1.2 million students since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and many school districts need to make the difficult and politically fraught decision to close neighborhood schools.
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Nov 4, 2024 | 
reason.org | Aaron Smith |Jude Schwalbach
The COVID-19 pandemic and school shutdowns massively disrupted the public education system. Many parents had to look at homeschooling, private schools, and other educational options for their kids, increasing the number of students leaving public schools in many areas across the country. Today, between declining birth rates, fiscal chaos, and competition from charter and private schools, public education bears little resemblance to what it was before the pandemic.
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Sep 24, 2024 | 
reason.org | Aaron Smith
Summary Currently, school board elections in Florida are nonpartisan. Florida Amendment 1 would make them partisan beginning in November 2026. It allows for partisan primary elections in advance of the 2026 general election. Proponents’ Arguments Proponents argue that partisan elections would promote greater transparency, giving voters access to information to help them assess school board candidates.
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Jun 27, 2024 | 
reason.org | Aaron Smith |Christian Barnard
Executive SummaryPublic school enrollment is falling fast, and hold harmless policies that provide funding protections for school districts are becoming increasingly costly. These policies can broadly be classified in two ways, with each type serving different aims. Declining enrollment protections allow school districts to use previous, rather than current, student counts for funding purposes.
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Jun 4, 2024 | 
reason.org | Aaron Smith |Jordan Campbell
As public schools grapple with historic challenges—enrollment losses, learning recovery, fiscal cliffs, and others—it’s critical to examine the funding trends that will shape the future of K-12 budgets. With federal data from the 2022 school year now available, policymakers can better grasp how the COVID-19 pandemic affected public school budgets and what might lie ahead. Here are four key takeaways from the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest school finance data.
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Mar 13, 2024 | 
reason.org | Aaron Smith
As states grapple with education challenges such as making up for COVID-19 lockdown-related learning loss and the expiration of federal pandemic aid, they may want to look at how Florida is getting an impressive return on its public education funding. For other states, Florida provides a model for doing more with less by pushing public schools to compete for students. The state may spend less per student on K-12 education, but not at the expense of student achievement.
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Feb 29, 2024 | 
reason.org | Aaron Smith |Christian Barnard |Jordan Campbell
Full Study: Public Education at a CrossroadsDetailed Reports for All 50 StatesPublic education is grappling with an unprecedented set of challenges in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. For starters, nationwide public school enrollment is down by over 1.2 million students compared with pre-pandemic levels, including losses exceeding 5% in New York, Oregon, and Mississippi.
