The National Center For Education Statistics predicts that by 2013 North Carolina will have 11,000 to 12,000 fewer K-12 students in its schools, compared to its 2001 enrollment. According to the NC Statistical Profile 2001, 1.29 million K-12 students, including charter students, enrolled in the public schools that year. If the NCES projections are correct, by 2013 enrollment will drop to about 1.28 million statewide.
The NCES study examines trends across all states, and the expected gainers outnumber the losers. In all, 30 states will pick up K-12 enrollment, NCES says in its Projections of Education Statistics to 2013. One-third of those should increase enrollments by more than 10 percent. Average national enrollment is expected to increase by 4 percent, with the biggest bump occurring in Western states.
North Carolina’s expected drop is mild compared to predictions for some states. The percentage decline in enrollment ranges from 0.2 percent predicted for New Hampshire, to 6.1 percent for West Virginia. Among 20 states expected to see shrinking enrollments, North Carolina’s is the second-smallest. But the implications for North Carolina school districts, some of which have been bursting at the seams, could be significant.
A slowdown or gradual decline in enrollment could take some pressure off school districts to fund a never-ending cycle of school construction. The NCES website lists 51 new public schools across North Carolina for the 2003-04 school year. Because of differences in the timing of data collection and reporting, NCES dates the facilities in 2003, while the N.C. Department of Public Instruction counts most of them in the 2001 school year.
“New Schools For North Carolina,” a February 2004 report from the Department of Public Instruction, lists another 52 completed facilities on new or existing sites from 2002 to 2004. Recent student assignment cases in Guilford, Mecklenburg, and Wake counties have highlighted the problems associated with rapidly expanding school populations. Construction costs for new schools, as outlined in the “Wake County Plan 2000 Midpoint Report,” range from 35 million to 45 million per high school, 21 million to 30 million per typical middle school, and 11 million to 17 million per elementary building. These figures do not reflect increased costs since 2000.
A general leveling off of enrollment won’t necessarily mean that every county will slow enrollment growth, but statewide budget pressures for K-12 education expenditures could clearly be affected.
According to NCES, school enrollment projections reflect “internal migration, legal and illegal immigration, the relatively high level of births in the 1990s, and resultant changes in population, rather than changes in attendance rates.” What they do not include are statistically unpredictable factors such as attitude or policy changes. An example of this type of change would be a move toward mandatory prekindergarten, they note. The measures also exclude home schoolers, on the ground that national data were available for only one year.
North Carolina is one of several states that has increased enrollment in recent years, partly because of Hispanic immigration Although public elementary and secondary enrollment swelled by 19 percent nationally from 1988 to 2001, the 2001-2013 increase of 4 percent indicates both a slowing and some change in the internal migration of families in the United States. The Northeast is expected to lose about 2 percent total enrollment, the Midwest to gain slightly, the South to increase by 4 percent, and the West to grow by 13 percent.
Coming up with numerical predictions is a risky and uncertain business, and predictions about the near future are always more accurate than ones for the more distant future. The National Center for Education Statistics used year 2000 Census data as the basis for their assumptions, but presented a range of high, moderate, and low estimates for the number of elementary and secondary teachers, pupil-teacher ratio, current expenditures per pupil, and teacher salaries. Spending and salary estimates are given in 2001 equivalent purchasing power.
How accurate are the data? For one-year-out K-8 enrollment, the prediction is expected to be within 0.3 percent of actual student numbers; by 10 years out it can vary by 2.7 percent. Grades nine to 12 near-term predictions are within 0.6 percent of enrollment, and 10 years out within 2.8 percent.
North Carolina’s total enrollment may be scheduled to shrink by 2013, but the number of high school graduates should increase significantly, NCES says.
Current four-year graduation rates hover around 60 percent in North Carolina, a statistic the Department of Public Instruction is anxious to improve. About 3.2 million students are expected to graduate nationwide in 2013, up 11 percent over 2001 figures. The projected increases, according to the study, reflect “changes in the 18-year-old population,” rather than changes in the graduation rates. That may vary by state.
State education policy affects both graduation rates and the number of public school graduates. According to the U.S. Department of Education, predictions for graduation rates are less accurate than predictions for enrollment-the 10-year prediction error is as high as 4.4 percent in either direction.
Even so, the projected increase in high school graduation for North Carolina, estimated at 20.6 percent, is among the highest in the nation. At the top of the list, NCES estimated that Nevada’s 2001-13 gain will be 72.2 percent, 40 percent higher than the nearest state. The biggest drop in graduations, at minus 31.7 percent, is projected for North Dakota.
According to NCES, there will be a 5 percent increase in the number of teachers nationwide, totaling 3.2 million by 2013. The pupil-teacher ratio is estimated to fall slightly from 15.9 to 15.8. Moderate salary projections, in constant 2001 dollars, would put average teacher pay at $47,400 in 2013, a 6 percent increase over the 2002-03 national average. Because of cost- of-living differences among the states, the real effect of any pay increase will play out differently in different states.
Palasek is a policy analyst at the John Locke Foundation and an assistant editor for Carolina Journal.