Fewer students are enrolled in public school across Massachusetts since the COVID-19 pandemic first shuttered classrooms in 2020 — with the biggest shifts in the state’s wealthiest areas.
A new study from researchers at Boston University finds that public school enrollment in Massachusetts has declined 2%, resulting in a loss of roughly 16,000 students since 2020.
During that same time, the study found that private school enrollment rose 14%, indicating that families that left public schools in 2020 have continued to opt for private school. And while the number of children being homeschooled in Massachusetts is still relatively small, the number of students pursuing that option has surged 45% since 2020.
Boston University Education Policy Researcher Joshua Goodman said that a slight increase in public school enrollment when schools partially reopened in the fall of 2021 suggested that the pandemic might have been a temporary blip. But a comparison of state and district enrollment patterns before the pandemic and through the fall of 2024 suggests a more persistent shift.
“We’re now five years out, and the fact that we still see differences in families’ choices about where to send their children to school suggests that there’s something else going on,” said Goodman, who co-authored the study.
The study suggests two causes for the enrollment changes: parents are concerned about academic rigor and the general uptick in behavioral problems among students.
“The pandemic certainly set back students’ learning by quite a lot,” Goodman said. “Many public schools have been focused on trying to get kids back to where they should be, but that means that at times, students who don’t need that support but need more of a challenge are not finding that.”
Goodman said the pandemic also affected students’ behavioral, social and emotional skills, which may have prompted some parents to remove their children over concerns around classroom discipline and disruptive behavior from other students.
The study also notes that these enrollment shifts aren’t distributed equally as the wealthiest 20% of public school districts lost the most students.
Brookline, along with Cambridge, Newton and Weston, is among the districts that experienced more significant enrollment declines after the pandemic.
Brookline Public Schools’ total enrollment was 7,777 in 2020 and dropped to 6,891 in 2021. The district has regained students since then, slowly climbing back up to just over 7,000 in 2024.
Parent and Brookline School Committee Vice Chair Sarah Moghtader said she has anecdotally heard of students leaving the district for private school, but she thinks other factors, like the lack of affordable housing in Brookline and the country’s current politics, could also be at play.
“We get a lot of families who come internationally for post doc or research work, and some of those families might not be able to come with what’s going on nationally right now,” Moghtader said. “If a student has a disability and we don’t have a program that’s serving them well here in Brookline, sometimes they get out-of-district placement.”
Goodman said it’s worth public schools asking parents what they are looking for and thinking about how to meet that parental demand.
“The public school enrollment declines are a big concern immediately for the funding of public schools, but also the longer term health of the schools if you remove a set of parents who might otherwise have been there as voters to support schools in their communities,” said Goodman.
Moghtader said that while the school committee has not addressed this concern collectively, their goal is to ensure that every student in Brookline is served.
“That includes students that need support, as well as students that need a challenge, and it’s absolutely one of our values that students have rigor,” Moghtader said.
An enrollment forecast study for Brookline Public Schools predicted the slow decline but also a rebound. Moghtader says the study anticipates a 7.7% increase in students between 2028 and 2034.
But Goodman cautions that school districts may have to work to retain and attract those students.
“I think whether public schools are able to re-attract some of the families that have left as a result of the pandemic probably depends most on whether the schools themselves start doing the things that parents are looking for with respect to their kids’ education,” said Goodman.
