Class Dismissed: Public Schools Keep Losing Students

America’s government school system is in “sustained decline,” and it’s expected to continue until at least the next decade. That’s according to a report from nonprofit groups Bellwether and WestEd.

Meanwhile, homeschooling continues to rise in popularity. It has gone from a choice made mostly by evangelical parents to one embraced by parents of all races, political persuasions, and religious beliefs.

Declining Enrollment Continues

Early this week, The Associated Press reported on the “accelerating” school closures and “financial pain” that lie ahead. Public school enrollment dropped nationwide by more than 1.4 million students, about three percent, between fall 2019 and 2024. The article features a school in Vallejo, California, where enrollment “tumbled from nearly 18,000 in the fall of 2006 to about 9,300.” California, we are told, “has recorded one of the nation’s most precipitous enrollment drops.”  

In the southern part of the Golden State, the Los Angeles Unified School District has lost hundreds of thousands of students. Enrollment dropped from more than 700,000 in 2002-03 to a current projection of fewer than 400,000 students now, according to K-12 Dive, a news site that focuses on primary and secondary education.

There’s more good news. According to K-12 Dive, districts in New Mexico, Oregon, and Minnesota are also on a long slide. “Albuquerque Public Schools reported that its enrollment dropped from 84,000 students to under 64,000 between 2018 and the end of the 2025-26 school year,” per the report. Meanwhile, Minneapolis Public Schools suggested back in September closing down as many as 16 school buildings. Portland Public Schools were weighing a similar option, “the closure of up to 18 schools as it faces enrollment declines.”

Over in New England, New Hampshire schools saw one of the sharpest enrollment declines in the country. Local media reported this week that the Granite State ranked third nationwide in decline from 2019 to 2024.

Expect this pattern to continue, says K-12 Dive:

These enrollment declines and the resulting budget pressures are forcing more districts to consider — and approve — school closure and consolidation plans. And with researchers projecting continued enrollment woes in the near future, additional closures and consolidations are likely to follow. 

A Vicious Cycle

This is the worst drop-off in government school enrollment in half a century. Bellwether and WestEd note “the last comparable decline in enrollment happened in the 1970s, after the Baby Boom.”

Bellwether and WestEd’s analysis blames declining birth rates, slowing immigration, and the expansion of school vouchers, education savings accounts, and homeschooling for what is happening to public education. Three of the five factors are responses to the growing realization that government schools are grossly unqualified to educate children.

Since public school funding is based on enrollment, Bellwether and WestEd say that schools will become worse as more parents opt out, putting the system in a perpetual state of erosion. The system “could lose $11.5 billion in state revenues annually by 2030-31, prompting widespread staff layoffs, program reductions, and school consolidations and closures.” This means that “states risk a vicious cycle in which ongoing enrollment declines and the fiscal distress they create constrain the quality of public schools, further accelerating family opt-out, disinvestment, and erosion of public trust.”

A watershed moment that triggered this unending exodus was the Covid era, when the school doors were closed. “Following a sharp drop during the COVID-19 pandemic, enrollment partially rebounded in some states, but nationally it remains below prepandemic levels and continues to trend downward,” the authors admit.

Homeschooling Continues to Gain Popularity

Homeschooling, meanwhile, has been on an upward trajectory, although its ascent has recently slowed. At least three million school-age kids are now educated at home, which comes to six percent of America’s K-12 cohort.

According to Johns Hopkins Homeschool Hub:

New data for the 2025-2026 school year show that homeschooling participation continued to grow across the country, but the pace of that growth has slowed. Of the 22 states that have reported so far, 17 (or 77%) show an increase, down from 80% of reporting states in 2024-2025 and 90% in 2023-2024. Across those same 22 states, the growth rate fell from 6.3% in 2024-2025 to 1.5% this year.

The states that saw the biggest jump in homeschooling over the 2025-26 school year were Montana (27.7%), North Dakota (18.8%), and Arkansas (14%). As for California, which seems to be at the center of every national story on this topic, more than 4,000 students there abandoned the system. The state saw an 8.5% jump in homeschooling in the last school year.

The trend is catching on across among all races and demographics. The Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE) points out:

What was once a movement primarily associated with white conservative Christian families now includes a wide range of families with diverse racial, religious, socioeconomic, and ideological backgrounds.

Which brings up the roadblocks ahead. As government education continues its deterioration and superior options like homeschooling gain popularity, expect resistance to build up.  

The Goal of Public Education

The main agenda of “public education” is not to educate, but to dumb down and condition. For decades, a majority of government school students have scored below proficient in every single academic subject. Even the government admits this. And if that’s not convincing enough, consider the testimony of Charlotte Iserbyt, a senior policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Education during Ronald Reagan’s first term. She discovered during her stint in the DoE that the government school system is subversively yet intentionally geared to brainwash children with collectivist views so they can grow into compliant serfs in an impending one-world government.

Schemes to Subvert Homeschooling

So, given that this effective tool is losing its edge and something better is replacing it, there will undoubtedly be efforts to stifle the positive effects of homeschooling. CRHE is at the forefront of that agenda, working to create legislation that would give the state a foothold in homeschools. “CRHE recommends that legislators include in-person educational assessment requirements for families homeschooling in their state,” according to the organization. The group claims the goal is to make sure the child doesn’t fall behind, but homeschoolers generally perform far better than public school kids. The real goal is likely to hijack the curricula and undermine the entire point of homeschooling. Because whoever determines the standards gets to set the education agenda.

Homeschooling threatens the status quo. It runs the risk of raising independent thinkers who will see the flaws in the current system and stop complying. Expect more schemes to subvert homeschooling as more parents abandon government education.