Public Schools Are in a Downward Spiral
13th June 2026
After decades of steady growth, attendance in U.S. K-12 public schools has shifted drastically. Over the past five years, registration has fallen by 2.3 percent, or 1.18 million students, and schools show no signs of rebounding. Lower birth rates are the primary driver of the downturn. The number of births has decreased steadily in recent years, with 690,000 fewer children born in 2024 than in 2007.
You can believe that if you want to. I suspect it’s more being driven by parents realizing that if they want an educated child they’re going to have to do it themselves rather than hand it off to the government. Roman Catholics have been doing this for centuries and the cost-effectiveness and superiority of that education over what one gets at a government school is common knowledge.
The loss of enrolled students has prompted some desperate measures. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is offering “free” childcare for 2-year-olds regardless of their parents’ income. In 2024, parents of toddlers spent an average of more than $23,000 on center-based childcare, according to the NYC Comptroller.
Why the ‘desperation’? Because all public schools depend for their funding on Federal ‘education’ programs, such as free breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner, which money is shelled out based on enrollment.
For those still attending public schools, chronic absence—the percentage of students missing 10 percent or more of a school year—is a growing problem. As of January 20, the latest data show that chronic absenteeism, which surged from 15 percent pre-COVID to 28 percent in 2022, remains elevated at 24 percent.
The assumption here, of course, is that when a child is ‘absent’ from the local government school, they are wandering the streets getting into mischief. That’s certainly a possibility in The ‘Hood, but more and more it reflects homeschooling and other alternatives. But no—if the government is not ‘educating’ your kid, your kid is not getting educated. QED.
Marc Oestreich, an education policy consultant and strategist, writes that in many cases, students are responding to schools that fail to teach them to read, fail to adapt to their needs, and fail to demonstrate that another day in the building is worth their time.
Oestreich asserts, “The honest version of the absenteeism story is not that American parents have suddenly become uniquely irresponsible, or that students have collectively misplaced their work ethic somewhere between TikTok and the bus stop. The honest story is that a substantial number of families, concentrated among the poor, the male, and the badly served, have concluded from direct experience that what their local public school offers is not worth the time.”
And there you have it. Markets work even when you don’t want them to.
While public schools are struggling, private school attendance has remained steady. However, as more parental choice bills advance, the number of children attending private schools will very likely increase. There are currently 75 private school choice programs in 34 states, serving more than 1.5 million students.
Also, the Federal Tax Credit Scholarship Program, which takes effect on January 1, 2027, is likely to substantially increase the number of students leaving public schools for private schools.
A step in the right direction.