Student Enrollment Increases Reflect Diversity

As teachers return to classrooms throughout the country, they are expected to see increased enrollment with a boom in the number of Hispanic students fueling enrollment growth nationally.

The nation’s public schools are poised to welcome an unprecedented 49.6 million pre-K-12 students as the school year opens, but whether individual school districts see an increase in students depends a great deal on where they are located. At Dodge City High School, in Dodge City, Kan., 70 percent of the students are reported to be Hispanic.

The increase – projected rise of 1 million this fall from the 2005-06 school year, the most recent national numbers available from the federal government – continues a 10-year trend, with statisticians predicting that schools in the West and the South will receive more students, while schools in the Midwest and the Northeast will experience a decline.
According to demographers the number of Hispanic youngsters in the United States is fueling overall growth in enrollment and is expected to do so for at least two more decades.
But when it comes to particular school districts, those broad patterns can play out very differently; administrators in some districts that have already started classes report enrollment that doesn’t match national trends.
While enrollment is on the upswing in the South, for example, the Atlanta public schools and the Dougherty County schools in Albany, Ga., are losing students to suburban districts.
Though enrollment is generally declining in the Northeast, Danbury, Conn. is projecting that enrollment will increase by a few hundred students over the next five years.
The NCES, an arm of the U.S. Department of Education, uses U.S. Census Bureau data and its own statistical methods to project enrollment. The organization usually releases actual enrollment figures about 1½ years after the schools collect the data. The NCES doesn’t project the ethnic and racial makeup of student enrollment, but actual figures for that makeup through the 2005-06 school year illustrate patterns that some demographers say are likely to continue.
Those figures show that the share of enrollment for Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander students grew rapidly, while that of non-Hispanic whites declined. In the 2005-06 school year, for example, 19.8 percent of the student body nationally was Hispanic, up from 13.5 percent a decade before.

The proportion of student enrollment that was Asian or Pacific Islander increased to 4.6 percent, from 3.7, in those same years. The share of non-Hispanic black students grew slightly, to 17.2 percent from 16.9 percent.
Meanwhile, the percentage of non-Hispanic white students decreased to 57 percent from 64.7 percent in that same 10-year period.
The Pew Hispanic Center projects that the number of school age children will increase by 4.8 million by 2020, and that 4.7 million of those children will be Hispanic, meaning that Hispanic children will account for 98 percent of the growth.
One of the fastest-growing school districts in the country, Nevada’s Clark County system, which encompasses Las Vegas, reflects the national trend of growth in Hispanic enrollment.

— Teachers of Color